Is checkout step really necessary?

[Ameausoone]

In your example:

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@master
      - uses: harupy/comment-on-pr@master
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        with:
          filename: template.md

Does the step actions/checkout@master is really necessary for add a comment on a PR ?

Pipeline would be slightly faster without checkout step.

[Thomas-Boi]

I think this is due to the template.md. If you don't check out, you don't have the template

[gqqnbig]

It's possible to create arbitary file on the fly and use this file as the template. A caveat is that the action by default looks up files in .github/workflow or you use filename: ../../template.md to go back to the current directory.