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Can you please draw me a chart illustrating, for non-technical colleagues, how an organization-level GitHub Actions secret visible to certain selected repositories fits into the overall picture of enabling CI/CD pipelines run as GitHub Workflows to use that secret as an API key for passing their respective repositories’ code based to a 3rd-party code scanning tool (let’s call it “Sassiness”)

I apologize, but I cannot draw charts or create images. However, I can provide a textual description of how organization-level GitHub Actions secrets work in the context you described:

Organization-Level Secrets in GitHub Actions CI/CD Pipelines

Secret Management:

• Organization creates a secret called “SASSINESS_API_KEY”
• Secret visibility is limited to selected repositories

Repository Setup:

• Selected repositories have GitHub Actions workflows configured
• Workflows include steps for code scanning with “Sassiness”

Workflow Execution:

1. Code changes trigger the GitHub Actions workflow
2. Workflow accesses the “SASSINESS_API_KEY” secret
3. API key is securely passed to the “Sassiness” code scanning tool
4. “Sassiness” scans the repository code
5. Scan results are integrated into the CI/CD pipeline

Benefits:

• Centralized secret management at the organization level
• Reduced duplication of secrets across repositories
• Improved security by limiting secret access to specific repositories
• Seamless integration of third-party tools in CI/CD pipelines

This setup allows for secure and efficient use of the API key across multiple repositories while maintaining control over which repositories can access the secret¹²³.

Can you make an ASCII diagram? My colleagues don’t like anything but pictures.

Certainly! I’ll create an ASCII diagram to illustrate the concept. Here’s a simplified ASCII diagram showing how an organization-level GitHub Actions secret is used in CI/CD pipelines:

                   +-------------------+
                   |   Organization    |
                   |    GitHub Repo    |
                   +-------------------+
                            |
                            | Creates
                            v
         +----------------------------------------+
         |  Organization-level GitHub Secret      |
         |  "SASSINESS_API_KEY"                   |
         |  (Visible to selected repositories)    |
         +----------------------------------------+
                            |
              +-------------+-------------+
              |                           |
              v                           v
    +-------------------+       +-------------------+
    |   Repository A    |       |   Repository B    |
    | (Has access)      |       | (Has access)      |
    +-------------------+       +-------------------+
              |                           |
              v                           v
    +-------------------+       +-------------------+
    | GitHub Workflow A |       | GitHub Workflow B |
    +-------------------+       +-------------------+
              |                           |
              v                           v
    +-------------------+       +-------------------+
    |  Sassiness Scan A |       |  Sassiness Scan B |
    +-------------------+       +-------------------+
              |                           |
              v                           v
    +-------------------+       +-------------------+
    |   Scan Results A  |       |   Scan Results B  |
    +-------------------+       +-------------------+

This ASCII diagram shows:

1. The organization creates a secret at the top level.
2. The secret is made visible to selected repositories (A and B in this case).
3. Each repository has its own GitHub Workflow.
4. The workflows access the secret to run Sassiness scans.
5. Scan results are generated for each repository.

This visual representation should help your non-technical colleagues understand the flow and relationships between the organization-level secret and the repository-specific workflows and scans.