Update Workflows to Version 0.18.3

[K-Meech]

🤖 This is an automated build

Update Workflows from sandpaper version 0.16.12 -> 0.18.3

• Auto-generated by create-pull-request on 2026-01-20T00:07+00:00

[github-actions]

ℹ️ Modified Workflows

This pull request contains modified workflow files and no preview will be created.

Workflow files modified:

• .github/workflows/README.md
• .github/workflows/docker_apply_cache.yaml
• .github/workflows/docker_build_deploy.yaml
• .github/workflows/docker_pr_receive.yaml
• .github/workflows/pr-comment.yaml
• .github/workflows/pr-preflight.yaml
• .github/workflows/sandpaper-version.txt
• .github/workflows/update-cache.yaml
• .github/workflows/update-workflows.yaml

If this is not from a trusted source, please inspect the changes for any malicious content.

[thompson318]

This seems a big change to the workflows, and I'm not clear where it came from. Further investigation required.

[K-Meech]

@thompson318 - there was a message about these updates on the Carpentries slack (+ maintainers mailing list). Copying the main details here:

Hi Maintainers 👋 as mentioned last year, we are rolling out new versions of the GitHub Actions workflows for building and maintaining lessons. Here are the most important things you need to know:
💡 What do you need to do? The new workflows will be adopted automatically for all of The Carpentries official lessons, as well as lessons using the Workbench in the Incubator and Lab. All you need to do is merge in the next automated pull request updating the workflows on our lesson repository.
If you are also maintaining your own Workbench lesson repositories elsewhere, you will need to enable the automated pull requests or run the sandpaper::update_github_workflows() function on your lesson locally and push the changes to your GitHub repository.

We would need to check these new updates work well with our varnish fork though (so we still get the custom IDEAS branding).

[K-Meech]

There's been some more discussion on the Carpentries slack, and looks like a fix for the currently failing / skipped checks will come next Tuesday. So we should hold off merging this until that fix is out.

[K-Meech]

I'm going to close this, as there will be a new automated PR opened tomorrow with the fixed Carpentries workflows