orchestrating-deployment-pipelines

name	orchestrating-deployment-pipelines
description	Deploy use when you need to work with deployment and CI/CD. This skill provides deployment automation and orchestration with comprehensive guidance and automation. Trigger with phrases like "deploy application", "create pipeline", or "automate deployment".
allowed-tools	Read, Write, Edit, Grep, Glob, Bash(git:*), Bash(docker:*), Bash(kubectl:*)
version	1.28.0
author	Jeremy Longshore <[e-mail]>
license	MIT
tags	["devops","deployment","ci-cd"]
compatibility	Designed for Claude Code

Orchestrating Deployment Pipelines

Overview

Orchestrate multi-stage deployment pipelines that coordinate builds, tests, approvals, and releases across environments (dev, staging, production). Implement deployment strategies including blue-green, canary, rolling updates, and feature flags using Kubernetes, cloud-native services, and CI/CD platforms.

Prerequisites

• CI/CD platform configured (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, ArgoCD)
• Kubernetes cluster with kubectl access or cloud deployment target (ECS, Cloud Run, App Engine)
• Container registry with built and tagged images ready for deployment
• Environment-specific configuration (secrets, environment variables) stored securely
• Monitoring and alerting configured to detect deployment failures

Instructions

1. Define the deployment topology: target environments, promotion flow (dev -> staging -> production), and approval gates
2. Select deployment strategy per environment: rolling update for staging, canary or blue-green for production
3. Generate deployment manifests (Kubernetes Deployments, Services, Ingress) or cloud service configurations
4. Implement pre-deployment checks: database migration status, dependency health, configuration validation
5. Configure canary analysis: route 5-10% of traffic to new version, monitor error rate and latency for 15 minutes before full rollout
6. Add post-deployment verification: smoke tests, health check endpoints, synthetic monitoring
7. Implement automated rollback triggers: revert if error rate exceeds 1% or P99 latency doubles during canary phase
8. Set up deployment notifications: Slack messages with deployment status, version, environment, and commit link
9. Document the deployment runbook with manual intervention procedures for edge cases

Output

• Deployment pipeline configurations (GitHub Actions workflows, ArgoCD Applications)
• Kubernetes manifests with deployment strategy annotations
• Canary analysis configuration (Flagger, Argo Rollouts)
• Pre/post-deployment hook scripts
• Deployment runbook with rollback procedures

Error Handling

Error	Cause	Solution
ImagePullBackOff	Image tag not found in registry or auth failure	Verify image exists with docker manifest inspect; check imagePullSecrets