Strong agree. The best workflow I've seen uses CICD as a very thin wrapper around in-tree scripts or make files.
If a Dev can run some/all of the "cicd" stuff locally, they can see, control, and understand it. It helps tremendously to have a sense of ownership and calm, vs "cicd is something else, la la la".
(This doesn't always work. We had a team of two devs, who had thin-wrapper CICD, who pretended it was an alien process and refused to touch it. Weird.)
+1. The only CI tool that I've seen really organize around this principle is Buildkite, which I've used and enjoyed. I'm currently using Github Actions and it's fine but Buildkite is literally sooooo good for the reasons you've mentioned.
If a Dev can run some/all of the "cicd" stuff locally, they can see, control, and understand it. It helps tremendously to have a sense of ownership and calm, vs "cicd is something else, la la la".
(This doesn't always work. We had a team of two devs, who had thin-wrapper CICD, who pretended it was an alien process and refused to touch it. Weird.)