Actions Marketplace: Installation snippet is truncated and confusing when pasted from action browser on workflow editor page

[AMDphreak]

Why are you starting this discussion?

Product Feedback

What GitHub Actions topic or product is this about?

Workflow Configuration

Discussion Details

When I open an action from the workflow editor (repository → Actions → Set up a workflow yourself → search for an action), the Installation snippet in the Marketplace panel is hard to read and produces syntax errors when pasted into an empty workflow file. The snippet appears to be auto-generated by GitHub (it isn’t stored in the action repo—e.g. kameshsampath/antora-site-action has no file that contains this snippet). The snippets shown when clicking Install on the action’s full Marketplace page look correct; the workflow-editor Installation view does not.

1. Inconsistent indentation

The - name: … line is shown with much more leading indentation than the rest of the step. The next lines (# You may pin…, uses:, with:, etc.) are at a shallower indent, so the snippet doesn’t form one valid YAML step—the step body isn’t indented under the step.

The snippet shown:

            - name: Antora Site
  # You may pin to the exact commit or the version.
  # uses: kameshsampath/antora-site-action@00187261061958ec343ba2d888cb641d43a8c02c
  uses: kameshsampath/antora-site-action@v0.2.4
  with:
    antora_playbook: # default is site.yaml
    site_sources_path: # optional

2. Lack of Syntax highlighting causes visual noise

The lack of syntax highlighting makes your snippet look ugly and noisy. A commented-out # uses: owner/action@commit line sits right above the real uses: owner/action@version line. Having two “uses” lines (one comment, one real) with different refs is confusing until you realize the snippet is designed for a syntax-highlighted code block. You need to add syntax highlighting to that preview.

3. Pasting causes YAML errors

When I paste the snippet into an empty workflow file, the editor shows errors like “Unexpected scalar token in YAML stream” on the uses: line. That matches the snippet being invalid at that position (wrong indentation and/or it’s only a step fragment that must go under jobs.<id>.steps).

4. The Install snippet on the full Marketplace page does not match the one on the workflow editor page

Remediation

• Indentation: The Installation snippet should use consistent indentation so the step is one valid YAML block (e.g. uses: and with: indented under the - name: step).
• Comments and syntax highlighting: Consider adding syntax highlighting and reducing clutter or moving it to a comments section (e.g. omit or shorten the “pin to exact commit” comment so it doesn’t sit directly above uses:), or add a note that the snippet is a single step and must be pasted under jobs.<job_id>.steps:.
• Parity: The workflow-editor Installation snippet should match the quality of the snippet shown when clicking Install on the action’s full Marketplace page.

Thanks for considering.