[josephfusco]

Shortens the two jobs that decide how long a PR waits for checks. On recent human PRs, Schema Linter (median 101s) and Test Plugin (median 98s) were the last to finish on almost every commit.

• Test Plugin / Test Plugin (Gutenberg): start MySQL in the background before the image build, so its pull (~11s) and first boot (~8s) overlap the build instead of following it.
• Schema Linter: install graphql-inspector globally alongside the linter. The old local npm install in the repo root also installed @wordpress/scripts from the lockfile (~23s). The Docker-based action-get-latest-tag, rebuilt every run, is replaced with gh release view.

Use of AI Tools

AI assistance: Yes
Tool(s): Claude Code
Model(s): Claude Opus 5.5
Used for: Assisting with analyzing CI run history and writing the workflow changes.

[Copilot]

🟡 Changes recommended

The workflow can finish successfully without a baseline schema because the release lookup failure is masked and subsequent download and inspector failures do not stop execution.

1 open issue

• Propagate failures when looking up the baseline release tag · New

What changed in this PR

This PR aims to reduce PR check times by overlapping database startup with image builds and removing unnecessary setup work from schema validation.

Changes:

• Start MySQL in the background in both plugin test workflows, then wait for it before starting WordPress.
• Install GraphQL Inspector globally alongside the schema linter to avoid installing repository development dependencies.
• Replace the Docker-based latest-tag action with gh release view.

File	Description
.github/​workflows/​test-plugin.yml	Overlaps database startup with the test image build.
.github/​workflows/​test-plugin-gutenberg.yml	Applies the same startup optimization to Gutenberg tests.
.github/​workflows/​schema-linter.yml	Streamlines GraphQL tooling installation and release lookup.

_{Review effort: Balanced}