CircleCI Cheat Sheet

Reference for CircleCI config.yml syntax, orbs, workflows, and executors for building continuous integration pipelines.

2 PagesIntermediateFeb 12, 2026

Basic Config

Minimal CircleCI 2.1 configuration with a single job.

yaml

version: 2.1jobs:  build:    docker:      - image: cimg/node:20.10    steps:      - checkout      - run: npm ci      - run: npm testworkflows:  main:    jobs:      - build

Orbs & Workflows

Using orbs and multi-job workflows with dependencies.

yaml

version: 2.1orbs:  node: circleci/node@5.2.0jobs:  test:    executor: node/default    steps:      - checkout      - node/install-packages      - run: npm test  deploy:    docker:      - image: cimg/base:2024.01    steps:      - run: ./deploy.shworkflows:  build-test-deploy:    jobs:      - test      - deploy:          requires:            - test          filters:            branches:              only: main

Key Concepts

Core CircleCI configuration building blocks.

jobs- Named units of work, each with its own executor and steps
executors- Reusable execution environments (docker, machine, macos) referenced by jobs
orbs- Shareable, versioned packages of config (commands, jobs, executors)
workflows- Orchestrate job order, parallelism, and fan-in/fan-out via requires
caching- save_cache/restore_cache steps persist dependencies between builds
contexts- Named groups of secrets shared securely across projects

Dependency Caching

Manual cache save/restore using a checksum key.

yaml

steps:  - checkout  - restore_cache:      keys:        - v1-deps-{{ checksum "package-lock.json" }}  - run: npm ci  - save_cache:      key: v1-deps-{{ checksum "package-lock.json" }}      paths:        - node_modules

Pro Tip

Use 'workflows.<name>.jobs.<job>.requires' to fan-out independent jobs in parallel and only fan-in for deploy, cutting overall pipeline wall-clock time significantly.

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