Here’s my hot tip! (ok maybe luke warm)
Write as much of your CICD in a scripting language like bash/python/whatever. You’ll be able to test it locally and then the testing phase of your CICD will just be setting up the environment so it has the right git branches coined, permissions, etc.
You won’t need to do 30 commits now, only like 7! And you’ll cry for only like 20 minutes instead of a whole afternoon!
I think his politics are pretty far right, at least based on this video: https://youtu.be/nvQ-ZY460WQ