deploy-checklist

name	deploy-checklist
description	Pre-deployment verification checklist. Generates customized checklists based on tech-stack with rollback triggers. Auto-invoked by /draft:upload.

Deploy Checklist

You are generating a pre-deployment verification checklist customized to this project's technology stack.

MANDATORY GRAPH LOOKUP (read before Phase 1)

When draft/graph/schema.yaml exists, this skill must follow the graph-first lookup contract in core/shared/graph-query.md §Mandatory Lookup Contract. Use the graph to validate module boundaries before the deploy:

1. For each file in the deploy diff, run scripts/tools/graph-impact.sh --repo . --file <path> to enumerate the modules affected — flag any module not declared in hld.md §Detailed Design as a deployment-scope miss.
2. Run scripts/tools/cycle-detect.sh --repo . (and read draft/graph/architecture.json for the module overview) to ensure no fresh cycles were introduced after HLD sign-off.
3. Load draft/graph/hotspots.jsonl — any hotspot in the diff escalates the Resiliency row of Phase 0.

Filesystem grep is reserved for source-text scans (migration file names, flag-key strings). Module/impact discovery goes through the graph.

Red Flags — STOP if you're:

See shared red flags — applies to all code-touching skills.

Skill-specific:

• Deploying without a rollback plan
• Skipping database migration verification
• Deploying on Friday without explicit team approval
• Pushing to production without monitoring in place
• Ignoring failed checklist items marked as critical

Every deployment needs a rollback plan. No exceptions.

---

Pre-Check

0. Capture Git Context

Before starting, capture the current git state:

git branch --show-current # Current branch name
git rev-parse --short HEAD # Current commit hash

Store this for the checklist header. The checklist is scoped to this specific branch/commit.

1. Verify Draft Context

ls draft/ 2>/dev/null

If draft/ doesn't exist, this skill can still run standalone — generate a generic checklist.

2. Load Draft Context (if available)

Read and follow the base procedure in core/shared/draft-context-loading.md.

3. Run validator gate chain (WS-9)

Canonical chain documented in core/shared/verification-gates.md. A single non-zero exit aborts the checklist and the output groups defects by validator.

TRACK_DIR="$1" # absolute path to track-under-deploy, or .

DRAFT_TOOLS="${DRAFT_PLUGIN_ROOT:-$HOME/.claude/plugins/draft}/scripts/tools"
[ -d "$DRAFT_TOOLS" ] || DRAFT_TOOLS="$HOME/.cursor/plugins/local/draft/scripts/tools"
[ -d "$DRAFT_TOOLS" ] || DRAFT_TOOLS="$PWD/scripts/tools"

"$DRAFT_TOOLS/check-track-hygiene.sh" "$TRACK_DIR" || rc=$?
"$DRAFT_TOOLS/verify-citations.sh" "$TRACK_DIR" || rc=$?
"$DRAFT_TOOLS/verify-doc-anchors.sh" "$TRACK_DIR" || rc=$?
"$DRAFT_TOOLS/check-graph-usage-report.sh" "$TRACK_DIR" || rc=$?
"$DRAFT_TOOLS/check-scope-conflicts.sh" "$TRACK_DIR/.." || rc=$?
"$DRAFT_TOOLS/diff-templates-vs-tracks.sh" "$TRACK_DIR" || rc=$?

After the chain runs, write the result into metadata.json:pre_deploy_status (passing / failing / bypassed). The downstream checklist sections must not be considered "ready to deploy" if pre_deploy_status != passing.

Step 1: Parse Arguments

Check for arguments:

• /draft:deploy-checklist — Interactive: detect active track or ask for service name
• /draft:deploy-checklist <service> — Generate checklist for named service
• /draft:deploy-checklist track <id> — Generate from track's change scope

If a track is active: read draft/tracks/<id>/spec.md and plan.md for change scope.

Step 2: Load Context

1. Read draft/tech-stack.md — Identify deployment-relevant tech:
   • Database type (migrations needed?)
   • Container orchestration (K8s, Docker Compose?)
   • CI/CD pipeline details
   • Feature flag system
   • Monitoring/alerting stack
2. Read draft/workflow.md — Deployment conventions, toolchain (git)
3. Read draft/.ai-context.md — Service topology, dependencies
4. If track-scoped: Read draft/tracks/<id>/hld.md and lld.md if present — these are the source of truth for HLD §Checklist (Performance, Scale, Security, Resiliency, Multi-tenancy, Upgrade, Cost, Flags), §Deployment, §Observability, and LLD §Alerting Thresholds. The deploy checklist validates they are populated.

Step 3: Generate Checklist

Generate a four-phase checklist customized to the project's tech stack. Adapt items based on what the project actually uses — omit irrelevant items (e.g., skip database items if there is no database) and add project-specific items discovered in context.

Phase 0: HLD/LLD Gate (track-scoped only, when hld.md exists)

** blocker:** the HLD's §Checklist sections were the design-time commitment. If they are still empty at deploy time, the design was never validated against operational reality. This phase enforces that.

For criticality ∈ {high, mission-critical} (read from hld.md frontmatter classification.criticality), every row below MUST be checked before Phase 1 begins. For standard criticality, missing rows produce warnings but do not block. For low, this phase is informational.

• HLD §Performance populated — QPS and p95 latency stated

• HLD §Scale populated — horizontal scaling story documented; bottlenecks named

• HLD §Security populated — credentials, RBAC, encryption answered

• HLD §Resiliency populated — failure modes and graceful degradation described

• HLD §Multi-tenancy populated — isolation, predictable performance, migration covered

• HLD §Upgrade populated — backward compat, dependent service order, blast radius

• HLD §Flags and Controlled Rollout populated — flag names, kill switches

• HLD §Cost Implications populated — Cloud cost calculation included for SaaS deployments

• HLD §Deployment populated — DP/CP platform call answered (on-prem / SaaS / Cloud Console / IBM cloud)

• HLD §Observability populated — key metrics named with thresholds

• HLD §Approvals table signed by Technical Leads and Architecture Review Board (and Cloud Operations if SaaS, QA if on-prem) — Date column populated

• LLD §Alerting Thresholds table populated (when lld.md exists) — every metric has Threshold, Severity, Action

If any blocker row is empty for high/mission-critical: STOP. Do not generate Phases 1–3, do not run Step 5 (Save Output), and do not create the deploy-checklist.md file. Tell the developer: "HLD/LLD §[section] is empty for a [criticality] track. Fill it in hld.md / lld.md before deploy. Run /draft:decompose to refresh structural sections; author-driven sections must be filled manually."

If a partial file is needed for tracking, write it with status: BLOCKED in the frontmatter and _latest symlinks must NOT be updated — /draft:upload Step 2.5 detects status: BLOCKED and refuses to treat the file as a passing checklist.

Phase 1: Pre-Deploy

• Tests: All tests passing in CI
• Review: Code reviewed and approved
• Migrations: Database migrations tested on staging (if applicable)
• Migration Rollback: Down-migration verified (if applicable)
• Feature Flags: New features behind flags (if applicable)
• Config: Environment variables and secrets verified for target environment
• Dependencies: No known vulnerable dependencies (npm audit / pip audit / equivalent)
• Monitoring: Alerting rules configured for new endpoints/services
• Rollback Plan: Documented and tested (see Rollback Triggers below)
• Communication: Team notified of deployment window
• Backup: Database backup taken (if schema changes)
• Changelog: Release notes or changelog updated
• API Compatibility: Breaking changes documented and consumers notified

Phase 2: Deploy

• Method: [Canary / Blue-Green / Rolling / Direct] — specify strategy
• Sequence: Deploy order for multi-service changes documented
• Monitoring Dashboard: [URL] open during deployment
• Smoke Tests: Ready to run post-deploy
• Rollback Command: [specific rollback command] ready to execute
• Health Checks: Endpoints responding before traffic shift
• Traffic Shift: Gradual rollout percentage plan (if canary/blue-green)
• Deployment Log: Recording start time and each step completion

Phase 3: Post-Deploy

• Smoke Tests: All passing
• Error Rate: Below threshold ([X]% — from baseline)
• Latency: Below threshold ([X]ms — p95 from baseline)
• Logs: No unexpected errors in first 15 minutes
• Feature Verification: New features working as expected
• Data Integrity: No data corruption indicators
• Dependency Health: Downstream services unaffected
• Cleanup: Feature flags toggled, old code paths removed (if applicable)
• Documentation: Runbook updated if operational procedures changed
• Notification: Team notified of successful deployment

Rollback Triggers

Initiate rollback if ANY of these occur:

• Error rate exceeds 2x baseline
• p95 latency exceeds 3x baseline
• Data corruption detected
• Critical user-facing functionality broken
• Deployment stuck in partial state for >10 minutes
• Health check failures on >10% of instances
• Memory or CPU exceeding safe thresholds on deployed instances

Rollback Procedure

1. Execute rollback command (documented in Phase 2)
2. Verify previous version is serving traffic
3. Confirm error rates return to baseline
4. Investigate root cause before re-attempting deployment
5. Post-mortem if rollback was triggered by data corruption or user impact

Step 4: Present and Track

Present the checklist interactively. For each critical item (marked bold):

• If unchecked and user wants to proceed: warn "Critical item unchecked: [item]. Are you sure? [y/N]"
• Default: stop and address critical items

Allow the user to:

• Check off items as they complete them
• Add custom items specific to this deployment
• Mark items as N/A with justification

Step 5: Save Output

MANDATORY: Include YAML frontmatter with git metadata. Follow core/shared/git-report-metadata.md.

Include the report header table immediately after frontmatter:

| Field | Value |
|-------|-------|
| **Branch** | `{LOCAL_BRANCH}` → `{REMOTE/BRANCH}` |
| **Commit** | `{SHORT_SHA}` — {COMMIT_MESSAGE} |
| **Generated** | {ISO_TIMESTAMP} |
| **Synced To** | `{FULL_SHA}` |

Save to:

• Track-scoped: draft/tracks/<id>/deploy-checklist.md
• Standalone: draft/deploy-checklist-<timestamp>.md with symlink deploy-checklist-latest.md

TIMESTAMP=$(date +%Y-%m-%dT%H%M)
# Example: draft/deploy-checklist-2026-03-15T1430.md
ln -sf deploy-checklist-${TIMESTAMP}.md draft/deploy-checklist-latest.md

Mandatory Self-Check (before saving the checklist)

Before saving the checklist file, internally verify and report:

1. Graph files queried — JSONL files loaded plus any live graph query-tool invocations (impact, cycles, modules).
2. Layer 1 files deliberately skipped — list any context sections skipped.
3. Filesystem grep fallback justification — for every grep/find run, name the concept it searched for.

If draft/graph/schema.yaml does not exist, set Graph files queried: NONE and use justification graph data unavailable.

Graph Usage Report (append to checklist)

Emit the canonical footer from core/shared/graph-usage-report.md §Canonical footer. The lint hook scripts/tools/check-graph-usage-report.sh validates the section on save.

Cross-Skill Dispatch

• Auto-invoked by: /draft:upload (pre-upload verification)
• References: core/agents/ops.md for production-safety mindset
• Jira sync: If ticket linked, attach checklist and post comment via core/shared/jira-sync.md
• MCP: GitHub MCP for change details, Jira MCP for ticket context

Error Handling

If no tech-stack.md: Generate generic checklist with all items, note: "Customize after running /draft:init" If no active track: Generate standalone checklist, ask which service/release If no workflow.md: Use sensible defaults, recommend documenting deployment conventions