| name | staging-deployment |
| description | Deploy and verify software in a staging or testing environment. Use when DevOps must promote a build beyond local deployment, run staging smoke checks, coordinate SSH/Docker/Kubernetes staging rollout, preserve rollback evidence, and produce a deploy report without exposing environment credentials or secrets. |
| agents | ["devops"] |
| sdlc_phase | deploy |
| owner | Platform Eng |
| status | active |
Staging Deployment
When to use
Use this skill when a DevOps task targets staging, testing, UAT, pre-prod, or any shared non-local environment. Local QA deploys still use local-deployment; this skill governs promotion into an environment other people depend on.
Inputs and outputs
- Inputs: task ID, target environment, approved build/image/version, deployment mechanism, release-readiness evidence, rollback plan, environment config contract, and access method.
- Outputs: staging deploy report, smoke-test evidence, target URLs, rollout/rollback command references, and follow-up issues for failed gates.
Procedure
- Confirm target and approval. Verify the task explicitly names the staging environment and version/build to deploy. If the target is ambiguous, halt with
NEEDS_CONTEXT.
- Run release gates first. Consult
release-readiness; do not deploy if release readiness, migration safety, rollback readiness, secrets/config audit, or observability readiness is incomplete.
- Select execution path. Use
ssh-remote-operations, docker-deployment, or kubernetes-deployment depending on the target. Reference credential files only as command inputs.
- Freeze the deploy input. Record commit SHA, image tag/digest, migration version, config version, and artifact checksum where available. Do not deploy mutable
latest unless the task has an approved exception.
- Deploy in a bounded scope. Touch only the named environment, namespace, host alias, compose project, or service set. Avoid broad cluster/host operations.
- Run staging smoke checks. Verify health endpoints, required background workers, migrations, critical user flows, and external dependency connectivity using non-production fixtures.
- Capture rollback evidence. Record previous version, rollback command, rollback owner, expected data constraints, and whether rollback was tested or only prepared.
- Write the deploy report. Include environment, version, deploy mechanism, validation results, smoke checks, URLs, known limitations, and redacted config status.
Hard rules
- Never deploy to staging without an explicit target environment and build/version.
- Never bypass release-readiness, rollback-readiness, migration-safety, secrets-config-audit, or observability-readiness gates when they apply.
- Never read or print environment secrets, SSH config contents, kubeconfigs,
.env* values, registry tokens, or cloud credentials.
- Never mark staging deployment successful until smoke checks pass against the deployed environment.
- Never proceed to production from this skill; production promotion requires a separate approved task/change record.
References
