Deployment Patterns

Getting changes to production safely matters regardless of stack or platform. This skill focuses on patterns and principles so you can adapt them to your runtime, host, and team size.

Why this matters: Bad deploys waste time, burn trust, and sometimes take the product down. A little structure—clear strategy, health checks, and a rollback plan—turns "hope it works" into "we know how to fix it."

When to Activate

• Designing or documenting how you deploy (CI/CD, manual, or hybrid)
• Adding or changing health checks, rollback, or release process
• Preparing for production (first deploy or a new service)
• User asks about "deployment", "rollback", "production readiness", or "CI/CD"
• Writing or updating a runbook for deploy/rollback

Core Principle

Every deploy should have a rollback path. If you can't undo it, don't ship it until you've defined how you would undo it. In practice that means: know what "previous good" is, and have a tested way to get back there.

Generalization Note