Deploy checklist

Run through this before every deploy. Skipping it is how outages happen.

1. Environment variables

Every variable in example.env must exist in the deploy target with a real value:

• DATABASE_URL — points at the production Postgres (not local!)
• PORT — matches what the platform expects (usually set by the platform itself)
• NODE_ENV=production

Run on your local machine pointing at the prod env (carefully):

# Confirm the deployed app can reach the prod DB.
DATABASE_URL="<prod url>" npx prisma db pull --print | head -20

If that errors, fix the connection string before deploying.

2. Database migrations

DATABASE_URL="<prod url>" npx prisma migrate deploy

migrate deploy is the only command safe for production — it never resets, never prompts. Never run migrate dev against prod.

3. Secret hygiene

npx gitleaks detect --no-banner

If gitleaks finds anything in history, stop. Rotate the leaked credential and force-push only after coordinating with the user. Hardcoded secrets are the #1 cause of preventable breaches.

Check .env is in .gitignore:

git check-ignore .env    # must print ".env"

4. Build

npm run build

Both the client (vite build) and server (tsc -p tsconfig.server.json) must build clean. If either errors, deploy fails — fix locally first.

5. Run the full guardrail pass

npm run typecheck && npm run lint && npm run lint:unused && npm run test:run

CI does this too, but running locally first catches issues before they waste deploy time.

6. Smoke test the build

NODE_ENV=production node dist/server/index.js
# In another terminal:
curl http://localhost:3001/api/health

{ "status": "ok", "env": "production" } means the server started cleanly. Hit a tRPC endpoint too:

curl http://localhost:3001/trpc/contact.list

7. Rollback plan

Know how you'll roll back before you deploy:

• Platform redeploy of previous build (most platforms: 1 click)
• prisma migrate resolve --rolled-back <migration-name> if a migration corrupted state
• DB backup snapshot before the deploy (use the platform's built-in snapshot)

Checklist

• Prod env vars set and verified
• prisma migrate deploy succeeded
• gitleaks detect clean
• .env is in .gitignore
• npm run build succeeds locally
• typecheck, lint, lint:unused, test:run all pass
• Smoke test against production build succeeds
• DB snapshot taken; rollback path identified