Deploy

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name: Deploy description: Ship applications reliably with CI/CD, rollback strategies, and zero-downtime deployment patterns. metadata: {"clawdbot":{"emoji":"🚀","os":["linux","darwin","win32"]}}

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Deployment Rules

Pre-Deploy Checklist

Tests passing in CI — never deploy with failing tests

Environment variables set in target — missing secrets cause silent failures

Database migrations run before code deploy — new code expecting new schema fails

Rollback plan ready — know exactly how to revert before you need to

Deployment Strategies

Rolling: update instances one by one — safe, slower, no extra resources

Blue-green: full parallel environment, instant switch — fast rollback, 2x resources

Canary: route percentage to new version — catch issues early, complex routing

Choose based on risk tolerance and resources — no universal best

Zero-Downtime Deploys

Health checks must pass before traffic routes — unhealthy instances stay out

Graceful shutdown: finish in-flight requests before terminating

Database changes must be backwards compatible — old code still running during deploy

Session handling: sticky sessions or external session store — don't lose user state

CI/CD Pipeline

Build once, deploy everywhere — same artifact to staging and prod

Cache dependencies between builds — save minutes per deploy

Parallel steps where possible — tests, linting, security scans

Fail fast: quick checks first — don't wait for slow tests to catch typos

Pin action versions with SHA — tags can change unexpectedly

Environment Management

Staging mirrors prod — different configs cause "works in staging" bugs

Secrets in secret manager, not environment files — rotation without redeploy

Feature flags decouple deploy from release — ship dark, enable later

Config as code in version control — except secrets

Database Migrations

Migrations must be backwards compatible during deploy window

Add columns nullable first, then backfill, then add constraint

Never rename columns in one step — add new, migrate data, remove old

Test migrations on prod-size data — 10 rows is fast, 10 million isn't

Rollback script for every migration

Rollback

Automated rollback on health check failure

Keep previous version artifacts available — can't rollback what you deleted

Database rollbacks are hard — design migrations to not need them

Feature flags for instant rollback of functionality without deploy

Document rollback procedure — panic time is not learning time

Monitoring Post-Deploy

Watch error rates for 15 minutes after deploy — most issues surface quickly

Compare key metrics to pre-deploy baseline

Alerting on anomalies: latency spike, error rate increase

Log correlation: trace requests through systems

User-facing smoke tests after deploy

Platform-Specific

Containers

Image tagged with git SHA — know exactly what's running

Health check endpoint that verifies dependencies

Resource limits set — prevent runaway containers

Serverless

Cold start optimization — keep bundles small

Provisioned concurrency for latency-sensitive paths

Timeout set appropriately — default is often too short

Static Sites

CDN cache invalidation after deploy

Immutable assets with content hashes — cache forever

Preview deploys for PRs

Common Mistakes

Deploying Friday afternoon — issues surface when nobody's watching

No rollback plan — hoping nothing goes wrong isn't a strategy

Mixing code and migration deploys — one thing at a time

Manual deploy steps — if it's not automated, it's wrong sometimes

Deploying without monitoring — you won't know it's broken until users complain