Deployment Checklist

"A checklist is the last line of defense between confidence and catastrophe." — Atul Gawande (adapted)

TL;DR

Provides a comprehensive pre-deployment and post-deployment validation checklist — environment variable verification, build integrity checks, rollback planning, monitoring setup, and go-live procedures. Use before any production deployment to ensure nothing critical is missed. [EXPLICIT]

Procedure

Step 1: Discover

• Review all changes included in the deployment (commits, PRs, changelog)
• Check environment variables are configured for production
• Verify third-party service configurations (API keys, webhooks, DNS)
• Confirm staging/preview deployment was tested and approved

Step 2: Analyze

• Assess deployment risk level (database migration, breaking API changes, new service)
• Plan rollback strategy for each deployed component
• Identify monitoring points (error rates, performance, key business metrics)
• Determine deployment window and communication plan

Step 3: Execute

• Pre-Deploy Checklist:
  • All CI/CD checks pass (lint, test, build, security scan)
  • Environment variables set in production config
  • Database migrations tested and reversible
  • Feature flags configured for gradual rollout
  • Rollback procedure documented and tested
  • Team notified of deployment window
• Deploy:
  • Deploy to production using CI/CD pipeline (not manual)
  • Monitor deployment progress and logs
• Post-Deploy Checklist:
  • Verify application loads and critical flows work
  • Check error monitoring (Sentry, Cloud Error Reporting) for new errors
  • Verify analytics events still firing correctly
  • Monitor performance metrics for regressions
  • Confirm SSL certificates and security headers intact

Step 4: Validate

• All checklist items completed and documented
• Monitoring shows no anomalies for 30 minutes post-deploy
• Rollback procedure confirmed available if needed
• Deployment logged in team changelog/release notes

Quality Criteria

• Pre-deploy checklist completed with no skipped items
• Rollback plan documented and tested before deployment
• Post-deploy monitoring active for at least 30 minutes
• Deployment documented in release notes or changelog
• Evidence tags applied to all claims

Anti-Patterns

• Deploying on Friday afternoon (reduced monitoring, slower incident response)
• Skipping staging validation ("it works locally")
• No rollback plan ("we'll fix forward" — until you can't)

Related Skills

• firebase-deployment — Firebase-specific deployment procedures
• github-actions-ci — automated deployment pipeline execution

Usage

Example invocations:

• "/deployment-checklist" — Run the full deployment checklist workflow
• "deployment checklist on this project" — Apply to current context

Assumptions & Limits

• Assumes access to project artifacts (code, docs, configs) [EXPLICIT]
• Requires English-language output unless otherwise specified [EXPLICIT]
• Does not replace domain expert judgment for final decisions [EXPLICIT]

Edge Cases

Scenario	Handling
Empty or minimal input	Request clarification before proceeding
Conflicting requirements	Flag conflicts explicitly, propose resolution
Out-of-scope request	Redirect to appropriate skill or escalate