If the commit can be reached from dev, the first value will be used; If the commit can be reached from stage, the second value will be used; If the commit can not be reached from eitherdev or stage, the build will fail with an unauthorized secret error.

My code cycle is like dev -> stage -> main. My code gets merged from dev to stage to main.

As per your explanation, which commit are you referring to when i merge from dev to stage.

Also, can you help me with where i'm going wrong as per my strategy for merging code and I want it to work as simple as that. If the pipeline is triggered from dev branch it should consider secret value as test:dev. When code is merged from dev branch to stage branch, the pipeline is triggered from stage and it should consider secret value as test:stage.

Thank You

So you want that secret test:dev is used for jobs triggered by open pull request from dev to stage, and secret test:stage is used for jobs triggered by pull request merge from dev to stage?