deployment-pipeline-design
Design multi-stage CI/CD pipelines with approval gates, security checks, and deployment orchestration. Use this skill when designing zero-downtime deployment pipelines, implementing canary rollout strategies, setting up multi-environment promotion workflows, or debugging failed deployment gates in CI/CD.
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Install
Works with every agent the skills CLI supports.
npx skills add https://github.com/wshobson/agents --skill deployment-pipeline-design- 01
Install
Run the command in your project. The CLI asks which agents to install for.
- 02
Describe the task
Ask your agent for something this skill covers. It loads deployment-pipeline-design automatically when relevant.
- 03
Review the result
The agent follows the SKILL.md steps, scripts and references bundled with the skill.
Security audits
Independent scans of the skill's instructions and bundled files.
SKILL.md
The instructions your agent reads when the skill is triggered.
Deployment Pipeline Design
Architecture patterns for multi-stage CI/CD pipelines with approval gates, deployment strategies, and environment promotion workflows.
Purpose
Design robust, secure deployment pipelines that balance speed with safety through proper stage organization, automated quality gates, and progressive delivery strategies. This skill covers both the structural design of pipeline architecture and the operational patterns for reliable production deployments.
Input / Output
What You Provide
- Application type: Language/runtime, containerized or bare-metal, monolith or microservices
- Deployment target: Kubernetes, ECS, VMs, serverless, or platform-as-a-service
- Environment topology: Number of environments (dev/staging/prod), region layout, air-gap requirements
- Rollout requirements: Acceptable downtime, rollback SLA, traffic splitting needs, canary vs blue-green preference
- Gate constraints: Approval teams, required test coverage thresholds, compliance scans (SAST, DAST, SCA)
- Monitoring stack: Prometheus, Datadog, CloudWatch, or other metrics sources used for automated promotion decisions
What This Skill Produces
- Pipeline configuration: Stage definitions, job dependencies, parallelism, and caching strategy
- Deployment strategy: Chosen rollout pattern with annotated configuration (canary weights, blue-green switchover, rolling parameters)
- Health check setup: Shallow vs deep readiness probes, post-deployment smoke test scripts
- Gate definitions: Automated metric thresholds and manual approval workflows
- Rollback plan: Automated rollback triggers and manual runbook steps
When to Use
- Design CI/CD architecture for a new service or platform migration
- Implement deployment gates between environments
- Configure multi-environment pipelines with mandatory security scanning
- Establish progressive delivery with canary or blue-green strategies
- Debug pipelines where stages succeed but production behavior is wrong
- Reduce mean time to recovery by automating rollback on metric degradation
Detailed patterns and worked examples
Detailed pattern documentation lives in references/details.md. Read that file when the navigation tier above is insufficient.
Troubleshooting
Health check passes in pipeline but service is unhealthy in production
The pipeline health check is hitting a shallow /ping endpoint that returns 200 even when the database is unreachable. Use a deep readiness check that verifies actual dependencies (see Health Checks section above).
Canary deployment never promotes to 100%
Argo Rollouts requires a valid AnalysisTemplate to auto-promote. If the Prometheus query returns no data (e.g., metric name changed), the analysis stays inconclusive and promotion stalls. Add inconclusiveLimit so the rollout fails fast rather than hanging:
spec:
metrics:
- name: error-rate
failureCondition: "result[0] > 0.05"
inconclusiveLimit: 2 # fail after 2 inconclusive results, not hang indefinitely
provider:
prometheus:
query: |
sum(rate(http_requests_total{status=~"5.."}[2m]))
/ sum(rate(http_requests_total[2m]))
Staging deploy succeeds but production job never starts
Check that production environment protection rules are configured — a missing reviewer assignment means the approval gate waits indefinitely with no notification. In GitHub Actions, ensure Required reviewers is set to an existing user or team in Settings → Environments → production.
Docker layer cache busted on every run causing slow builds
If COPY . . appears before dependency installation, any source file change invalidates the dependency layer. Reorder to copy dependency manifests first:
# Good: dependencies cached separately from source code
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm ci
COPY . .
RUN npm run build
Rollback leaves database migrations applied to old code
A service rollback without a migration rollback causes schema/code mismatch errors. Always make migrations backward-compatible (additive only) for at least one release cycle, and keep undo scripts versioned alongside the migration:
# migrations/V20240315__add_nullable_column.sql (forward)
# migrations/V20240315__add_nullable_column.undo.sql (backward)
Never run destructive migrations (DROP COLUMN, ALTER NOT NULL) until the old code version is fully retired from all environments.
Advanced Topics
For platform-specific pipeline configurations, multi-region promotion workflows, and advanced Argo Rollouts patterns, see:
references/advanced-strategies.md— Extended YAML examples, platform-specific configs (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure Pipelines), multi-region canary patterns, and database migration rollback strategies
Related Skills
github-actions-templates- For GitHub Actions implementation patterns and reusable workflowsgitlab-ci-patterns- For GitLab CI/CD pipeline implementationsecrets-management- For secrets handling in CI/CD pipelines
FAQ
What does the deployment-pipeline-design skill do?
Design multi-stage CI/CD pipelines with approval gates, security checks, and deployment orchestration. Use this skill when designing zero-downtime deployment pipelines, implementing canary rollout strategies, setting up multi-environment promotion workflows, or debugging failed deployment gates in CI/CD.
How do I install deployment-pipeline-design?
Run npx skills add https://github.com/wshobson/agents --skill deployment-pipeline-design in your project. The skills CLI detects the agents you use and copies the skill into the right folder. For Claude Code you can also place the skill folder at ~/.claude/skills/deployment-pipeline-design/ (personal) or .claude/skills/deployment-pipeline-design/ (project).
Which AI agents can use deployment-pipeline-design?
Any agent that supports the open Agent Skills format (a folder with a SKILL.md file), including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, Windsurf, Cline, OpenCode and more.
Is deployment-pipeline-design safe to install?
Security partners have reviewed it: Gen Agent Trust Hub passed; Socket passed; Snyk passed; Runlayer passed; ZeroLeaks passed. As with any skill, read the SKILL.md and bundled scripts before installing.
Who maintains deployment-pipeline-design?
It is published by wshobson in wshobson/agents. It has 13,877 recorded installs.
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