What is a CI/CD job in GitLab and what are the required keywords?

A job is the fundamental unit of work in a GitLab pipeline. It defines a set of shell commands to run, where to run them, and under what conditions. Jobs run independently on runners and produce a job log accessible in the GitLab UI.

# Minimum viable job (only "script" is required):
hello-world:
  script:
    - echo "Hello, World!"

# Full job with common keywords:
build-app:
  stage: build
  image: node:20-alpine
  before_script:
    - npm ci
  script:
    - npm run build
  after_script:
    - echo "Build complete"
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - dist/
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "main"

Jobs must be defined at the top level of the YAML file. Any YAML key not matching a reserved keyword is treated as a job name. Job names starting with a dot (e.g. .setup) are hidden jobs - they don't run but can be used as templates.

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