---

name: mlops-automation description: Automate an MLOps project with mise tasks, lefthook hooks, Docker images, GitHub Actions, and MLflow tracking on a SQL backend. Use when adding a task runner, git hooks, CI/CD, or experiment tracking to a working package. license: MIT metadata: author: Médéric HURIER (Fmind) source: github.com/MLOps-Courses/mlops-coding-skills/tree/main/mlops-automation created: 2026-01-25 updated: 2026-10-12

MLOps Automation

Goal

To elevate the codebase to production standards by adding Task Automation (mise), Git Hooks (lefthook), Containerization (docker), CI/CD (github-actions), and Experiment Tracking (mlflow).

Prerequisites

• Language: Python 3.14
• Manager: uv
• Context: Preparing for scale and deployment.

Instructions

Preserve existing work and repository visibility. Prepare local changes first; commit, push, change remote settings, publish, or deploy only with user authorization.

1. Task Automation

Expose a single, shared task vocabulary with mise (replaces just/make).

1. Tool: mise — pins the toolchain and defines tasks in mise.toml.
2. Vocabulary: install, format, check, test, build, watch. Run everything via mise run <task> so hooks and CI reuse the same entrypoints.
3. Core Tasks:
   • format: Format code and config (ruff format, dprint fmt).
   • check: Static checks in parallel (ruff check, ty, pip-audit, gitleaks, trivy, actionlint + zizmor).
   • test: Run pytest.
   • build: Build the wheel (uv build).
4. The Gate: define all = ["mise run format", "mise run check", "mise run test", "mise run build"]. This is the one command a developer, a hook, an agent, or CI runs; nothing else is allowed to define "ready".
5. Pinned Tools: declare every non-Python tool under [tools], run mise lock, and commit mise.lock — it records the exact version, URL, and checksum per platform, so uv.lock pins the libraries and mise.lock pins the binaries.
6. No Silent Installs: set [settings.task] run_auto_install = false so a task fails loudly on a missing tool instead of downloading one mid-run.

2. Git Hooks

Catch issues locally with lefthook (replaces pre-commit).

1. Framework: lefthook with thin hooks — every command delegates to a mise run task so hooks and CI stay identical.

2. Explicit Priorities: lefthook orders commands alphabetically, so state the order yourself — formatters at 10, the staged secret scan at 20, the whole-tree checks at 30. Without priorities, check can read files that the formatter has not rewritten yet.

3. Staged Files: pass {staged_files} to the formatters and set stage_fixed: true, so a reformat is restaged into the commit being made rather than left dirty in the working tree.

4. Secret Gate: run mise run check:leaks --staged before the checks. A history scan does not look at the commit you are about to create; --staged does.

5. pre-push: Run mise run test.

6. Example:

   # lefthook.yml
   pre-commit:
     parallel: false
     commands:
       format:dprint:
         priority: 10
         glob: "*.{json,md,toml,yaml,yml}"
         run: mise run format:dprint {staged_files}
         stage_fixed: true
       format:python:
         priority: 10
         glob: "*.py"
         run: mise run format:python {staged_files}
         stage_fixed: true
       check:leaks:
         priority: 20
         run: mise run check:leaks --staged
       check:
         priority: 30
         run: mise run check
   
   pre-push:
     commands:
       test:
         run: mise run test
   

7. Commits: Enforce Conventional Commits (e.g., feat: add new model) so git-cliff can generate the changelog.

3. Containerization

Reproducibility anywhere.

1. Tool: docker.
2. Base Image: Use python:3.14-slim for a minimal footprint; copy a pinned uv binary into the build stage (ghcr.io/astral-sh/uv:0.13.0, never :latest — a floating tag is invisible to Dependabot).
3. Optimization:
   • Layer Caching: Install dependencies with uv sync --frozen --no-install-project --no-dev before copying src/; then install the package with uv sync --frozen --no-dev --no-editable.
   • Multi-stage: Copy the non-editable .venv to an identical Python runtime image, or install the wheel and its locked runtime dependencies in the final stage.
4. Non-root: Run as a fixed numeric user (USER 10001:10001) and copy with --chown=10001:10001, so ownership is stable across rebuilds and readable by a host that does not share the image's /etc/passwd.
5. Lint It: add check:dockerfile = "hadolint Dockerfile" to check; the Dockerfile is code and deserves the same gate.
6. Registry: ask for the company artifact registry, or use ghcr.io for GitHub.

4. CI/CD Workflows

Automate verification and release with GitHub Actions.

1. Platform: ask for the company CI/CD platform, or use github-actions for GitHub.

2. One Step: CI runs mise run all and nothing else. A workflow that lists format, then check, then test as separate steps will drift from the local gate; a workflow with one step cannot.

3. Hardening: pin the runner (ubuntu-24.04), set timeout-minutes, keep permissions: contents: read, and check out with persist-credentials: false so no step inherits a push token it does not need.

4. Prove Cleanliness: end with test -z "$(git status --porcelain)". Because mise run all starts by formatting, a dirty tree at the end means a contributor committed unformatted files.

5. Example:

   # .github/workflows/ci.yml
   name: CI
   on:
     push:
       branches: [main]
     pull_request:
   permissions:
     contents: read
   concurrency:
     group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.event.pull_request.number || github.ref }}
     cancel-in-progress: ${{ github.ref != 'refs/heads/main' }}
   jobs:
     check:
       runs-on: ubuntu-24.04
       timeout-minutes: 20
       steps:
         - name: Checkout repository
           uses: actions/checkout@3d3c42e5aac5ba805825da76410c181273ba90b1 # v7.0.1
           with:
             persist-credentials: false # no step pushes back to the repository
         - name: Install mise system
           uses: jdx/mise-action@08ae2a091c038e1e05ec6f5115dc5c69d5a2a6b8 # v5.1.2
           with:
             cache: true # reuse the tools pinned by mise.lock
         - name: Run canonical gate
           run: mise run all
         - name: Verify no changes
           run: test -z "$(git status --porcelain)"
   

6. Audit the Workflows: add check:actions = ["actionlint", "zizmor --offline .github/workflows/"] to check. actionlint catches invalid syntax and shell bugs; zizmor catches workflow security issues (script injection, over-broad permissions, credential persistence). Pin actions to full commit SHAs with readable version comments; the default pinning rule can then enforce the policy without a relaxation file.

7. Scheduled Security Pass: push CI only scans recent commits, so add .github/workflows/security.yml on a weekly schedule (plus workflow_dispatch) that checks out with fetch-depth: 0 and runs the full-history gitleaks git --redact=100 and mise run check:scan using the committed Trivy policy. Keep fetch-depth: 0 out of ci.yml: a full clone on every push costs time and buys nothing the scheduled job does not already cover.

8. Release: cd.yml on Release builds the image and publishes docs via the official GitHub Pages Actions (configure-pages, upload-pages-artifact, deploy-pages).

9. Dependencies: add .github/dependabot.yml for every ecosystem in use (uv, github-actions, docker), grouping minor and patch updates into one pull request per ecosystem so majors are still reviewed alone.

5. AI/ML Experiments & Registry

Manage the ML lifecycle with MLflow 3.

1. Platform: MLflow (3.16.1+).
2. Backend: use a SQL store, locally as well as in production. sqlite:///mlflow.db is a real SQLAlchemy backend that supports the model registry and shares its shape with a production Postgres, so the client API can stay consistent. A shared deployment also needs artifact access, authentication, migration, and backup ownership. The legacy file store is in maintenance mode and disabled by default. MLFLOW_ALLOW_FILE_STORE=true is a migration escape hatch; use SQL for current features and a shared production service.
3. Local Server: mlflow server --backend-store-uri=sqlite:///mlflow.db --artifacts-destination=./mlartifacts. Add mlflow.db to .gitignore — it is local state, and committing it puts a binary database in the history.
4. Tracking: Use mlflow.autolog(); log metrics, params, and artifacts.
5. Models: Log models with the keyword name= (e.g., mlflow.pyfunc.log_model(name=...)).
6. Validation: Gate promotion with mlflow.validate_evaluation_results against explicit metric thresholds.
7. Registry:
   • Register top models manually or via CI.
   • Aliases: Use an alias such as @Champion for a deployment pointer, matching its case exactly. Evaluate and promote an immutable candidate version first; aliases can move. Never rely on moving versions (e.g., v1 -> v2).

6. Design Patterns

Write flexible code.

1. Strategy: For swappable algorithms (e.g., different model types).
2. Factory: For creating objects from config (e.g., ModelFactory).
3. Adapter: For standardizing mismatched interfaces.

7. Write It Down

Automation only helps if the next contributor finds it.

1. AGENTS.md: the commands, the definition of done, the conventions, and the layout — for AI assistants.
2. README.md: the same ground truth for humans, without the agent-facing rules.
3. Rule: when a task changes, both files change in the same commit. A stale command in AGENTS.md is worse than no command at all.

Self-Correction Checklist

• Task Vocabulary: Does mise run all (and format/check/test/build) work?
• Pinning: Are mise.lock and uv.lock committed?
• Hooks: Do the hooks use explicit priorities, {staged_files}, and check:leaks --staged?
• Image: Is the Dockerfile multi-stage on python:3.14-slim, non-root, with a pinned uv, and does hadolint pass?
• CI/CD: Is ci.yml a single mise run all step with persist-credentials: false and the porcelain assertion?
• Workflow Audit: Do actionlint and zizmor pass, and does security.yml rescan the full history weekly?
• Tracking: Do runs land in a SQL-backed MLflow store, with validated thresholds before promotion?