/deploy-checklist

name: deploy-checklist
description: Pre-deploy and post-deploy checklist skill. Ensures env vars, migrations, CI, rollback plan, smoke tests, and monitoring are verified before and after every deployment.
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: wednesday-solutions
  version: "1.0"
permissions:
  allow:
    - Bash(npm run lint)
    - Bash(npm run format:check)
    - Bash(npm run test)
    - Bash(npm run build)
    - Bash(curl *)
    - Bash(gh run list)
    - Bash(gh pr checks)

Deploy Checklist Skill

Trigger

Load this skill when a dev is about to deploy or has just deployed:

• "We're deploying to production"
• "Pre-deploy check"
• "Post-deploy verification"
• "Run the deploy checklist"
• "Is it safe to deploy?"

**Do NOT use this skill for:** committing code (use `git-os`), creating a PR (use `pr-create`), or planning a project (use `greenfield`). This skill only applies at the deployment stage — code is already merged.

---

Run this checklist before and after every production deployment.

Pre-Deploy Checklist

• [ ] All CI checks green on the deploy branch
• [ ] Environment variables verified in target environment (no missing keys)
• [ ] Database migrations reviewed — irreversible migrations documented
• [ ] Migrations have been dry-run or tested in staging
• [ ] Rollback plan documented: what to revert and how
• [ ] Feature flags set correctly for the release
• [ ] Downstream services notified if API contracts changed
• [ ] Changelog updated with this release's changes
• [ ] Deployment window confirmed (avoid peak traffic)

Deploy

• [ ] Deploy initiated with correct branch / tag
• [ ] Deployment logs monitored in real time
• [ ] No unexpected errors during startup

Post-Deploy Checklist

• [ ] Smoke test: critical user flows verified manually or via synthetic monitoring
• [ ] Health check endpoint returns 200
• [ ] Error rate in monitoring (Datadog, Grafana, Sentry) is normal
• [ ] No spike in latency or DB query time
• [ ] Monitoring alerts reviewed — no new alerts triggered
• [ ] Changelog published / communicated to stakeholders
• [ ] Ticket status updated (closed / released)

Rollback Trigger Criteria

Initiate rollback immediately if:

• Error rate rises above 1% of requests
• P95 latency increases by more than 2x baseline
• Any data integrity issue detected
• Critical feature path returns 5xx

Tools

| Action | Tool | |--------|------| | Run lint, test, build scripts | `Bash` | | Check health endpoint | `Bash` — `curl -s <url>/health` | | Read config or env files | `Read` | | Check CI status | `Bash` — `gh run list` or `gh pr checks` |

Notes

• Never deploy on Fridays unless it's a critical hotfix
• Always have a second engineer available during production deploys
• Document the actual deploy time and outcome in the ticket