---name: devops-deploymentlicense: MITcompatibility: Claude Code 2.1.277+.description: Use when setting up CI/CD pipelines, containerizing applications, deploying to Kubernetes, or writing infrastructure as code. DevOps & Deployment covers GitHub Actions, Docker, Helm, and Terraform patterns.context: forkagent: ci-cd-engineeruser-invocable: falsedisable-model-invocation: falsemetadata: category: workflow-automationversion: 1.0.0author: OrchestKitcomplexity: mediumtags: devops, ci-cd, docker, kubernetes, terraformallowed-tools: Read Glob Grep WebFetch WebSearchpaths: [".github/workflows/**", "Dockerfile*", "docker-compose*", "**/k8s/**", "**/terraform/**"]path_patterns: ["*.tf", "*.tfvars", "**/k8s/**", "**/helm/**", "Dockerfile*", ".github/workflows/*"]invocation_hooks: - "command -v docker >/dev/null 2>&1 || echo 'Warning: docker not found — container operations will fail'---

DevOps & Deployment Skill

Comprehensive frameworks for CI/CD pipelines, containerization, deployment strategies, and infrastructure automation.

Note: If disableSkillShellExecution is enabled (CC 2.1.91), the Docker install check won't run. Verify Docker is available for container operations: docker --version.

Overview

• Setting up CI/CD pipelines
• Containerizing applications
• Deploying to Kubernetes or cloud platforms
• Implementing GitOps workflows
• Managing infrastructure as code
• Planning release strategies

Pipeline Architecture

┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐
│ Code     │─>│ Build    │─>│ Test     │─>│ Deploy   │
│ Commit   │ │ Lint     │ │ Scan     │ │ Release  │
└──────────┘ └──────────┘ └──────────┘ └──────────┘
  triggers     artifacts    reports      monitoring

Key Concepts

CI/CD Pipeline Stages

1. Lint & Type Check - Code quality gates
2. Unit Tests - Test coverage with reporting
3. Security Scan - npm audit + Trivy vulnerability scanner
4. Build & Push - Docker image to container registry
5. Deploy Staging - Environment-gated deployment
6. Deploy Production - Manual approval or automated

Container Best Practices

Multi-stage builds minimize image size:

• Stage 1: Install production dependencies only
• Stage 2: Build application with dev dependencies
• Stage 3: Production runtime with minimal footprint

Security hardening:

• Non-root user (uid 1001)
• Read-only filesystem where possible
• Health checks for orchestrator integration

Kubernetes Deployment

Essential manifests:

• Deployment with rolling update strategy
• Service for internal routing
• Ingress for external access with TLS
• HorizontalPodAutoscaler for scaling

Security context:

• runAsNonRoot: true
• allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
• readOnlyRootFilesystem: true
• Drop all capabilities

Deployment Strategies

Strategy	Use Case	Risk
Rolling	Default, gradual replacement	Low - automatic rollback
Blue-Green	Instant switch, easy rollback	Medium - double resources
Canary	Progressive traffic shift	Low - gradual exposure

Rolling Update (Kubernetes default):

strategy:
  type: RollingUpdate
  rollingUpdate:
    maxSurge: 25%
    maxUnavailable: 0  # Zero downtime

Secrets Management

Use External Secrets Operator to sync from cloud providers:

• AWS Secrets Manager
• HashiCorp Vault
• Azure Key Vault
• GCP Secret Manager

---

References

Docker Patterns

Load: Read("references/docker-patterns.md")

Key topics covered:

• Multi-stage build examples with 78% size reduction
• Layer caching optimization
• Security hardening (non-root, health checks)
• Trivy vulnerability scanning
• Docker Compose development setup

OrchestKit Delta (house rules)

Load: Read("references/ork-delta.md")

Key topics covered:

• CI concurrency groups, the sub-5-minute feedback budget, path filtering
• Service-container health gating, SHA-pinned deploys, CDN invalidation order
• Kubernetes probe budget, request/limit baseline, PodDisruptionBudget floor
• External Secrets refresh interval, ArgoCD prune plus selfHeal, Terraform state locking
• Alert thresholds with dwell windows, request-id log binding, rollback rehearsal

Railway Deployment

Load: Read("rules/railway-deployment.md")

Key topics covered:

• railway.json configuration, Nixpacks builds
• Environment variable management, database provisioning
• Multi-service setups, Railway CLI workflows
• References: references/railway-json-config.md, references/nixpacks-customization.md, references/multi-service-setup.md

Deployment Strategies

Load: Read("references/deployment-strategies.md")

Key topics covered:

• Rolling deployment (maxUnavailable / maxSurge)
• Blue-green deployment (service-selector switch and rollback)
• Canary releases (replica-ratio traffic split)

---

Upstream coverage (do not restate)

This skill wraps third-party products. Vendor mechanics are not restated here; fetch them from the source below. Where a row says "house subset stays in X", that file keeps only OrchestKit's threshold, config or ordering decision, not the vendor tutorial.

Topic	Fetch from
GitHub Actions workflow syntax, matrix builds, artifact upload/download, cache mechanics	https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/workflows-and-actions/workflow-syntax (house cache-key subset stays in rules/devops-ci-caching.md)
Trigger filters (on.push.paths, schedules, workflow_dispatch)	https://docs.github.com/en/actions/how-tos/write-workflows/choose-when-workflows-run/trigger-a-workflow
Service containers for integration tests	https://docs.github.com/en/actions/tutorials/use-containerized-services/use-docker-service-containers
Deployment environments and approval gates	https://docs.github.com/en/actions/how-tos/deploy/configure-and-manage-deployments/manage-environments
Protected branches and required status checks	https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/configuring-branches-and-merges-in-your-repository/managing-protected-branches/about-protected-branches (house approval counts stay in rules/devops-branch-protection.md)
Kubernetes probe semantics and every probe field	https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/configure-pod-container/configure-liveness-readiness-startup-probes/ (house probe numbers stay in references/ork-delta.md)
Requests, limits, quotas and QoS classes	https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/configuration/manage-resources-containers/ (house baseline stays in references/ork-delta.md)
PodDisruptionBudget semantics and eviction API	https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/run-application/configure-pdb/ (house minAvailable floor stays in references/ork-delta.md)
StatefulSets, ordinal identity, volumeClaimTemplates	https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/controllers/statefulset/
Helm chart authoring, templating and values files	https://helm.sh/docs/topics/charts/ (the chart directory layout we use stays in references/checklists-and-templates.md)
External Secrets Operator CRD fields and backends	https://external-secrets.io/latest/api/externalsecret/ (house refresh/creation policy stays in references/ork-delta.md)
ArgoCD automated sync, prune and self-heal	https://argo-cd.readthedocs.io/en/stable/user-guide/auto_sync/ (house retry/backoff stays in references/ork-delta.md)
Terraform S3 backend and state locking	https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/language/backend/s3 (house backend config stays in references/ork-delta.md)
Terraform module composition and variable files	https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/language/modules
Alembic revision, upgrade and downgrade CLI	https://alembic.sqlalchemy.org/en/latest/tutorial.html (the zero-downtime migration ordering stays in rules/devops-db-migrations.md)
Prometheus client instrumentation (Counter, Histogram, exposition)	https://prometheus.github.io/client_python/
PromQL functions (rate, histogram_quantile) for dashboards	https://prometheus.io/docs/prometheus/latest/querying/functions/
Prometheus alerting rule syntax	https://prometheus.io/docs/prometheus/latest/configuration/alerting_rules/ (house thresholds and dwell windows stay in references/ork-delta.md)
OpenTelemetry FastAPI auto-instrumentation and manual spans	https://opentelemetry-python-contrib.readthedocs.io/en/latest/instrumentation/fastapi/fastapi.html
structlog context binding	https://www.structlog.org/en/stable/contextvars.html (the bind-then-call ordering stays in references/ork-delta.md)
Trivy severity filtering and scan configuration	https://trivy.dev/latest/docs/configuration/filtering/ (the house image-scan CI wiring stays in references/docker-patterns.md, the weekly-scan schedule and severity floor in references/ork-delta.md)
CloudFront invalidation semantics and cost	https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/Invalidation.html (the sync-then-invalidate order stays in references/ork-delta.md)
Pre-launch security, load-testing and monitoring checklists	ork:security-patterns, ork:testing-perf, ork:monitoring-observability (the deploy-day checklist stays in references/checklists-and-templates.md)

---

Deployment Checklist & Templates

Load: Read("references/checklists-and-templates.md") for pre/during/post-deployment checklists, Helm chart structure, and template reference table.

---

Related Skills

• ork:security-patterns - Security scanning and hardening patterns for CI/CD pipelines
• ork:monitoring-observability - Prometheus, Grafana and alerting for deployed applications
• ork:database-patterns - Python/Alembic migration workflow for backend deployments
• portless (upstream) - Named .localhost URLs for multi-service local dev (portless alias api 8080)

Key Decisions

Decision	Choice	Rationale
Container user	Non-root (uid 1001)	Security best practice, required by many orchestrators
Deployment strategy	Rolling update (default)	Zero downtime, automatic rollback, resource efficient
Secrets management	External Secrets Operator	Syncs from cloud providers, GitOps compatible
Health checks	Separate startup/liveness/readiness	Prevents premature traffic, enables graceful shutdown

Capability Details

Load: Read("references/capability-details.md") for full keyword index and problem-solution mapping across all 6 capabilities (ci-cd, docker, kubernetes, infrastructure-as-code, deployment-strategies, observability).