Deployment Pipeline Hardening
By Avery Martinez · Published · Updated
Reviews a CI/CD pipeline for a safe release path: stage order, health checks, rollback, secret handling, and gates that stop a bad build before users see it.
Prompt template
## Deployment Pipeline Hardening Review my release pipeline and make it safer to ship through. - Pipeline config: [textarea: Paste the workflow or pipeline file] - Hosting target: [text: e.g. Kubernetes or Cloud Run] - CI system: [dropdown: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI, Jenkins, Other] - Release frequency: [dropdown: Many per day, Daily, Weekly, Rarely] - Environments: [text: e.g. staging and production] - Concerns: [multi: Rollback, Health checks, Secrets, Approvals, Caching, Supply chain] Trace one commit from push to production and list each stage, what it proves, and what happens when it fails. Look for missing gates: tests that do not block the deploy, a production deploy from an unreviewed branch, no smoke test after release. Check there is a defined way back: the previous artifact kept, a one-step rollback, and database changes that work with both old and new code. Confirm health checks test real readiness, not just that the process started. For secrets, check they come from the platform store, are scoped per environment, never echo to logs, and are not exposed to pull requests from forks. Check third-party actions are pinned to a commit and artifacts are built once and promoted. Return the findings by risk, a corrected pipeline snippet for the top three, and a short rollback runbook.