My understanding of git checkout was that if I specified the path I wanted my repo to end up at, it checks it out directly to there.

However, after some fiddling around, I have no discovered that the solution to this problem.

It is that even though i have specified the 'path: cibuild', inline with the error, i actually had to create the '/home/vsts/work/1/s/poc-plan-in-pr' directory myself manually.

- pwsh: |
          New-Item -Path "$(Pipeline.Workspace)/s/$(Build.Repository.Name)" -ItemType "directory" -Force
        displayName: "pr step: prepare checkout"
      - checkout: self
        displayName: "pr step: checkout repository"
        path: "cibuild"