DevOps rollout plan with verification and rollback

Author's original introduction

Generate comprehensive rollout plans with preflight checks, step-by-step deployment, verification signals, rollback procedures, and communication plans for infrastructure and application changes

SkillPi interpretation

Tasks

Draft deployment prerequisites, go/no-go checks, rollout phases, verification and rollback procedures.

Audience

DevOps and application teams planning a deployment.

Inputs and outputs

Input: change description, environments, constraints and risks. Output: a structured rollout plan with checks and communication steps.

Software, accounts and paid services

Environment details, service/dependency information and applicable approval requirements. No particular paid platform is mandatory in the description. Confirm actual file access and external-service permissions in your host. Domains referenced in the documents (not a runtime allowlist): No HTTP(S) domain stated.

Limits and differences

Generates a plan rather than executing a deployment. Commands, time estimates, approvals and rollback safety need validation in the actual environment.

Testing

Not tested

Security rating and access scope

caution · Static evidence review; not a runtime safety guarantee.

Environment details, service/dependency information and applicable approval requirements. No particular paid platform is mandatory in the description. Confirm actual file access and external-service permissions in your host. Domains referenced in the documents (not a runtime allowlist): No HTTP(S) domain stated.

Before use, confirm and authorize actual file access, external services and network destinations in your host. This review grants no runtime permissions.

Original SKILL.md

---
name: devops-rollout-plan
description: 'Generate comprehensive rollout plans with preflight checks, step-by-step deployment, verification signals, rollback procedures, and communication plans for infrastructure and application changes'
---

# DevOps Rollout Plan Generator

Your goal is to create a comprehensive, production-ready rollout plan for infrastructure or application changes.

## Input Requirements

Gather these details before generating the plan:

### Change Description
- What's changing (infrastructure, application, configuration)
- Version or state transition (from/to)
- Problem solved or feature added

### Environment Details
- Target environment (dev, staging, production, all)
- Infrastructure type (Kubernetes, VMs, serverless, containers)
- Affected services and dependencies
- Current capacity and scale

### Constraints & Requirements
- Acceptable downtime window
- Change window restrictions
- Approval requirements
- Regulatory or compliance considerations

### Risk Assessment
- Blast radius of change
- Data migrations or schema changes
- Rollback complexity and safety
- Known risks

## Output Format

Generate a structured rollout plan with these sections:

### 1. Executive Summary
- What, why, when, duration
- Risk level and rollback time
- Affected systems and user impact
- Expected downtime

### 2. Prerequisites & Approvals
- Required approvals (technical lead, security, compliance, business)
- Required resources (capacity, backups, monitoring, rollback automation)
- Pre-deployment backups

### 3. Preflight Checks
- Infrastructure health validation
- Application health baseline
- Dependency availability
- Monitoring baseline metrics
- Go/no-go decision checklist

### 4. Step-by-Step Rollout Procedure
**Phases**: Pre-deployment, deployment, progressive verification
- Specific commands for each step
- Validation after each step
- Duration estimates

### 5. Verification Signals
**Immediate** (0-2 min): Deployment success, pods/containers started, health checks passing
**Short-term** (2-5 min): Application responding, error rates acceptable, latency normal
**Medium-term** (5-15 min): Sustained metrics, stable connections, integrations working
**Long-term** (15+ min): No degradation, capacity healthy, business metrics normal

### 6. Rollback Procedure
**Decision Criteria**: When to initiate rollback
**Rollback Steps**: Automated, infrastructure revert, or full restore
**Post-Rollback Verification**: Confirm system health restored
**Communication**: Stakeholder notification

### 7. Communication Plan
- Pre-deployment (T-24h): Schedule and impact notice
- Deployment start: Commencement notice
- Progress updates: Status every X minutes
- Completion: Success confirmation
- Rollback (if needed): Issue notification

**Stakeholder Matrix**: Who to notify, when, via what method, with what content

### 8. Post-Deployment Tasks
- Immediate (1h): Verify criteria met, review logs
- Short-term (24h): Monitor metrics, review errors
- Medium-term (1 week): Post-deployment review, lessons learned

### 9. Contingency Plans
Scenarios: Partial failure, performance degradation, data inconsistency, dependency failure
For each: Symptoms, response, timeline

### 10. Contact Information
- Primary and secondary on-call
- Escalation path
- Emergency contacts (infrastructure, security, database, networking)

## Plan Customization

Adapt based on:
- **Infrastructure Type**: Kubernetes, VMs, serverless, databases
- **Risk Level**: Low (simplified), medium (standard), high (additional gates)
- **Change Type**: Code deployment, infrastructure, configuration, data migration
- **Environment**: Production (full plan), staging (simplified), development (minimal)

## Remember

- Always have a tested rollback plan
- Communicate early and often
- Monitor metrics, not just logs
- Document everything
- Learn from each deployment
- Never deploy on Friday afternoon (unless critical)
- Never skip verification steps
- Never assume "it should work"

Copyright and license notice

MIT License

Copyright GitHub, Inc.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.