What is a pipeline artifact and what are common examples?

A pipeline artifact is any file produced by a CI/CD job that needs to be passed to downstream jobs or stored for later use.

Common examples:

• Compiled binary or JAR file (Java/Go)
• Built Docker image pushed to a registry
• Frontend build output (dist/ or build/ folder)
• Test reports and coverage reports
• SBOM (Software Bill of Materials) files
• Terraform plan output