Deploy to Production

Production deployment with mandatory approval gates, verification, and rollback plan. Every step that mutates production requires explicit user APPROVE.

⚠️ SAFETY: No production mutation runs without explicit user APPROVE.

0. Gather Context

Read AGENTS.md at the project root to identify:

• Cloud platform (GCP, Azure, AWS)
• Deployment method (Kubernetes, Helm, Docker Compose, serverless)
• Production environment configuration (namespace, cluster, region)
• CI/CD pipeline (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins)

This determines which deployment commands and health checks apply.

1. Pre-Deployment Checklist

1a. Staging Verification

Confirm that staging deployment was successful:

• /deploy-staging completed successfully
• QA testing passed on staging
• No critical bugs found in staging
• Performance acceptable on staging

If staging was not verified — STOP. Run /deploy-staging first.

1b. Release Readiness

• Version tagged (/release completed)
• Changelog updated
• All tests pass on the release branch
• Database migrations tested (forward and rollback)
• Feature flags configured (if applicable)
• Monitoring dashboards ready
• On-call team notified

1c. Risk Assessment

Factor	Assessment
Breaking changes	Yes/No — migration guide ready?
Database migrations	Yes/No — reversible?
Infrastructure changes	Yes/No — /infra-change completed?
Third-party dependencies	Yes/No — API compatibility verified?
Traffic impact	Low/Medium/High
Rollback complexity	Simple (revert image) / Complex (DB migration)

If Risk = HIGH, apply Agent(sre-engineer) for SLO impact assessment.

2. Prepare Deployment

2a. Identify Deployment Method

Same as /deploy-staging Step 1c — but with production configuration.

2b. Backup Current State

# Record current deployment state for rollback
kubectl get deployment -n production -o yaml > pre-deploy-state.yaml

Or for Helm:

helm get values <release> -n production > pre-deploy-values.yaml
helm history <release> -n production

2c. Deployment Plan

Present the deployment plan:

## Production Deployment Plan
- **Version**: [current] → [new]
- **Method**: [K8s/Helm/Docker/Platform]
- **Migrations**: [list if any]
- **Config changes**: [list if any]
- **Expected downtime**: [none / X minutes]
- **Rollback plan**: [documented in Step 5]
- **Monitoring**: [dashboards to watch]

⚠️ STOP. Request APPROVE before proceeding to Step 3.

3. Deploy — REQUIRES EXPLICIT APPROVE

Only after the user explicitly approves:

3a. Run Migrations (if applicable)

# Database migration
<migration-command>

Verify migration completed successfully before proceeding.

3b. Deploy Application

Kubernetes / Helm:

helm upgrade --install <release> <chart> \
  -n production \
  -f values-production.yaml \
  --set image.tag=<tag>

Rolling update strategy — monitor pod rollout:

kubectl rollout status deployment/<name> -n production --timeout=300s

3c. Canary (if applicable)

If using canary deployment:

1. Deploy to canary (small % of traffic)
2. Monitor error rates and latency for 5–10 minutes
3. If metrics are healthy → proceed to full rollout
4. If degradation detected → rollback canary immediately

4. Post-Deployment Verification

4a. Health Check

// turbo
kubectl get pods -n production -o wide

curl -s <production-url>/health

4b. Smoke Tests

• Application responds on production URL
• Health endpoint returns 200
• Authentication flow works
• Core API endpoints respond correctly
• Key user journeys functional

4c. Monitor (5–10 minutes)

Watch for:

• Error rate: Should not increase vs pre-deploy baseline
• Latency: P50, P95, P99 within SLO targets
• CPU/Memory: No unusual spikes
• Logs: No new error patterns

// turbo
kubectl logs -n production -l app=<app-name> --tail=100 --since=5m

// turbo
kubectl get events -n production --sort-by='.lastTimestamp' --field-selector type!=Normal

5. Rollback Plan

If issues detected — execute rollback immediately:

Helm:

helm rollback <release> <previous-revision> -n production

Kubernetes:

kubectl rollout undo deployment/<name> -n production

Database migration rollback:

<rollback-migration-command>

After rollback:

• Verify application is healthy
• Notify team of rollback
• Create incident ticket for investigation

6. Summary

## Production Deployment Summary
- **Version**: [old] → [new]
- **Deployed at**: [timestamp]
- **Method**: [K8s/Helm/Docker/Platform]
- **Migrations**: [applied/N/A]
- **Health check**: [pass/fail]
- **Smoke tests**: [pass/fail]
- **Monitoring**: [stable/issues detected]
- **Rollback**: [not needed / executed at timestamp]
- **Production URL**: [url]
- **Next steps**: [monitoring period, team notification, release announcement]

Integration

• Preceded by: /deploy-staging (staging verification), /release (version tag)
• Roles: Agent(devops-engineer), Agent(sre-engineer), Agent(devops-architect) (deployment strategy design)
• Skills: deployment-procedures skill