Mission: DEPLOY 🚀

August 5, 2026 · View on GitHub

Production Deployment Preparation and Execution

Mission Code: DEPLOY
Estimated Duration: 1-2 hours
Complexity: Medium
Squad Required: Operator, Tester, Developer

ORIENTATION PROTOCOL — MAP FIRST, READ NARROWLY

Orientation is the expensive step, not the edit. On a large repo the bottleneck is finding what to change, not changing it, and the tokens spent reading files that turned out to be irrelevant are the largest avoidable cost in a session. These four rules are requirements, not preferences.

  1. Glob/Grep to locate before you Read. Find the path and the line number first: Glob for file paths, Grep for symbols, strings and call sites. Do not open a file to discover what is in it.
  2. Read only the lines you need. Use offset and limit on Read. A 40-line window around a confirmed match beats a 900-line whole-file read.
  3. Never read a whole file to find one symbol. Grep for the symbol, then read its neighbourhood. Read a file end to end only when you are about to change it end to end.
  4. Do not re-read what you have already read. Every re-read re-pays the whole file as input tokens and crowds out the context you still need.

If you read a whole file, be able to state why a narrower read would not have worked.

Mission Briefing

Execute a safe, systematic production deployment with proper validation, monitoring, and rollback procedures. This mission ensures your code reaches users reliably with minimal risk.

MCP Tools

Tools defer-load. The operator discovers what's needed via Tool Search:

tool_search_tool_regex_20251119(pattern="mcp__railway")
tool_search_tool_regex_20251119(pattern="mcp__netlify")

Profile switching is retired in v6.0.

Required Inputs

  1. Tested Codebase (required) - Code that has passed all tests
  2. Deployment Configuration (optional) - Environment configs, secrets
  3. Release Notes (optional) - User-facing change documentation

Mission Phases

Phase 1: Pre-Deployment Validation (15-20 minutes)

Lead: @tester
Objective: Ensure deployment readiness

Tasks:

  • Run complete test suite and validate all tests pass
  • Verify build process completes successfully
  • Check environment configuration and secrets
  • Validate database migrations (if applicable)
  • Review deployment checklist

Success Criteria:

  • All tests passing
  • Build artifacts generated successfully
  • Environment variables configured
  • Migration scripts validated

Phase 2: Deployment Planning (20-30 minutes)

Lead: @operator
Objective: Plan deployment strategy and rollback procedures

Tasks:

  • Review deployment target (staging → production)
  • Plan deployment windows and user communication
  • Prepare rollback procedures and scripts
  • Set up monitoring and health checks
  • Configure deployment pipeline

Success Criteria:

  • Deployment strategy documented
  • Rollback procedures ready
  • Monitoring configured
  • Pipeline ready for execution

Phase 3: Staging Deployment (15-25 minutes)

Lead: @operator
Support: @developer, @tester
Objective: Deploy to staging for final validation

Tasks:

  • Deploy to staging environment
  • Run smoke tests on staging
  • Validate all features working correctly
  • Check performance and error rates
  • Verify integrations and external services

Success Criteria:

  • Staging deployment successful
  • All smoke tests passing
  • Performance metrics within acceptable range
  • No critical errors detected

Phase 4: Production Deployment (20-30 minutes)

Lead: @operator
Support: @developer, @tester
Objective: Execute production deployment

Tasks:

  • Deploy to production environment
  • Monitor deployment process and metrics
  • Run immediate health checks
  • Validate critical user flows
  • Monitor error rates and performance

Success Criteria:

  • Production deployment successful
  • Health checks passing
  • Critical flows working
  • Error rates normal

Phase 5: Post-Deployment Monitoring (10-15 minutes)

Lead: @operator
Support: @analyst
Objective: Ensure deployment stability

Tasks:

  • Monitor application performance
  • Track user error reports
  • Validate monitoring and alerting
  • Document deployment outcomes
  • Communicate deployment success

Success Criteria:

  • Performance metrics stable
  • No increase in error rates
  • Monitoring systems active
  • Team notified of successful deployment

Common Variations

Hotfix Deployment

  • Duration: 30-45 minutes
  • Focus: Rapid deployment with minimal testing
  • Phases: Skip staging, focus on critical path validation

Blue-Green Deployment

  • Duration: 2-3 hours
  • Focus: Zero-downtime deployment with traffic switching
  • Phases: Add traffic switching and gradual rollout

Database Migration Deployment

  • Duration: 2-4 hours
  • Focus: Database changes with backward compatibility
  • Phases: Add migration validation and rollback testing

Microservice Deployment

  • Duration: 1-3 hours
  • Focus: Service-by-service deployment coordination
  • Phases: Add service dependency validation

Success Metrics

  • Deployment Success Rate: 100% successful deployment
  • Downtime: < 30 seconds (if any)
  • Rollback Time: < 5 minutes if needed
  • Error Rate: No increase post-deployment
  • Performance: Response times within 10% of baseline

Emergency Procedures

Deployment Failure

  1. Immediate: Stop deployment process
  2. Assess: Determine failure cause and impact
  3. Rollback: Execute rollback procedures if needed
  4. Communicate: Notify team and stakeholders
  5. Post-Mortem: Document failure and prevention

Production Issues Post-Deployment

  1. Monitor: Track error rates and performance
  2. Triage: Determine if rollback is necessary
  3. Fix: Apply hotfix if issue is minor
  4. Rollback: Execute rollback if issue is critical
  5. Learn: Document and improve procedures

Integration Points

  • Follows: BUILD, FIX, REFACTOR missions
  • Enables: MONITOR, RELEASE missions
  • Coordinates with: Team communication systems
  • Requires: CI/CD pipeline and monitoring setup

Mission Command: /coord deploy [tested-codebase] [deployment-config] [release-notes]

"Deployment is not the end, it's the beginning of your code's journey to users."

Post-Mission Cleanup Decision

After completing this mission, decide on cleanup approach based on project status:

✅ Milestone Transition (Every 2-4 weeks)

When: This mission completes a major project milestone, but more work remains.

Actions (30-60 min):

  1. Extract lessons to lessons/[category]/ from progress.md
  2. Archive milestone-relevant Phase Handoff blocks from agent-context.md if needed
  3. Clean agent-context.md (retain essentials, archive historical details)
  4. Continue using agent-context.md (Phase Handoff blocks accumulate across milestones)
  5. Update project-plan.md with next milestone tasks

See: templates/cleanup-checklist.md Section A for detailed steps

🎯 Project Completion (Mission accomplished!)

When: All project objectives achieved, ready for new mission.

Actions (1-2 hours):

  1. Extract ALL lessons from entire progress.md to lessons/
  2. Create mission archive in archives/missions/mission-[name]-YYYY-MM-DD/
  3. Update CLAUDE.md with system-level learnings
  4. Archive all tracking files (project-plan.md, progress.md, etc.)
  5. Prepare fresh start for next mission

See: templates/cleanup-checklist.md Section B for detailed steps

🔄 Continue Active Work (No cleanup needed)

When: Mission complete but continuing active development in same phase.

Actions: Update progress.md and project-plan.md, continue working.

Reference: See project/field-manual/project-lifecycle-guide.md for complete lifecycle management procedures.