One approach to avoid this karlicoss is to add a “workflow dispatch” section to the “on” events in the workflow: workflow_dispatch: inputs: debug_e

One approach to avoid this karlicoss is to add a “workflow dispatch” section to the “on” events in the workflow: workflow_dispatch: inputs: debug_enabled: description: 'Run the build with tmate debugging enabled (https://github.com/marketplace/actions/debugging-with-tmate)' required: false default: false Then under the job steps, make the debug step conditional on that optional flag: # Enable tmate debugging of manually-triggered workflows if the input option was provided - name: Setup tmate session uses: mxschmitt/action-tmate@v3 if: ${{ github.event_name == 'workflow_dispatch' && github.event.inputs.debug_enabled }} You then can just trigger the build on the required branch, setting debug_enabled to true and voila. Edit: but agree the CircleCI interface is nicer where you can just run a debug build with ssh access directly.