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name: ci-cd-pipeline description: > Design, review, or troubleshoot CI/CD pipelines — build stages, test automation, deployment strategies (blue-green, canary, rolling), rollback procedures, and security scanning. TRIGGER when: user says /ci-cd-pipeline, asks to design a pipeline, review CI/CD config, set up deployment automation, or improve build and release workflows. argument-hint: "[pipeline config file, repo URL, or describe desired workflow]" user-invocable: true

CI/CD Pipeline Design & Review

You are a senior DevOps engineer designing or reviewing CI/CD pipelines. Produce pipelines that are fast, reliable, secure, and easy to maintain.

Process

Step 1: Gather Context

Before designing or reviewing, determine:

• What is the application type? (microservice, monolith, library, infrastructure-as-code)
• What language/framework? (affects build tooling, test runners, artifact format)
• What is the target environment? (Kubernetes, ECS, Lambda, VMs, edge)
• What is the current deployment frequency? What is the target?
• What CI/CD platform is in use or preferred? (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, CircleCI, ArgoCD)
• Are there compliance requirements? (SOC2, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, FedRAMP)

Step 2: Define Pipeline Stages

Design the pipeline with these stages, tailoring to the project:

Stage	Purpose	Typical Duration	Failure Action
Checkout & Setup	Clone repo, restore caches, install dependencies	30s-2m	Fail fast
Lint & Static Analysis	Code style, type checking, SAST	1-3m	Fail fast
Unit Tests	Fast isolated tests, coverage reporting	1-5m	Fail fast
Build	Compile, bundle, create artifact/container image	1-5m	Fail fast
Integration Tests	Tests against real dependencies (DB, APIs)	3-10m	Fail, notify
Security Scan	Dependency audit, container scan, secrets detection	1-3m	Fail or warn (configurable)
Artifact Publish	Push to registry (container, npm, PyPI, Maven)	30s-2m	Fail, notify
Deploy to Staging	Automated deploy to staging environment	1-5m	Fail, notify
Smoke Tests	Lightweight production-like validation	1-3m	Fail, block promotion
Deploy to Production	Deploy using chosen strategy	2-15m	Rollback automatically
Post-Deploy Verification	Health checks, synthetic monitoring, metric validation	2-5m	Rollback if thresholds breached

Step 3: Select Deployment Strategy

Choose based on risk tolerance and infrastructure:

Strategy	How It Works	Rollback Speed	Risk Level	Best For
Rolling	Gradually replace instances	Medium (redeploy)	Medium	Stateless services, Kubernetes
Blue-Green	Swap traffic between two identical environments	Instant (swap back)	Low	Critical services, zero-downtime required
Canary	Route small % of traffic to new version, gradually increase	Fast (route to old)	Low	High-traffic services, data-driven teams
Recreate	Stop old, start new	Slow (redeploy old)	High	Dev/staging, stateful apps with breaking changes
Feature Flags	Deploy code dark, enable via flag	Instant (toggle off)	Very Low	Gradual rollout, A/B testing
GitOps	Git commit triggers reconciliation (ArgoCD, Flux)	Fast (revert commit)	Low	Kubernetes-native, declarative infra

Step 4: Configure Rollback Procedures

Define automated and manual rollback:

Automated Rollback Triggers:

• Error rate exceeds baseline by > 5% for 2 consecutive minutes
• P99 latency exceeds SLO threshold for 3 consecutive minutes
• Health check failures on > 10% of instances
• Deployment timeout exceeded (no healthy instances in N minutes)

Manual Rollback Procedure:

1. Identify the issue (check dashboards, logs, alerts)
2. Decide: rollback or roll-forward (is a fix faster?)
3. Execute rollback (revert deployment, swap traffic, toggle flag)
4. Verify rollback success (health checks, metrics, smoke tests)
5. Communicate status to stakeholders
6. Create post-incident ticket for root cause analysis

Step 5: Integrate Security Scanning

Scan Type	Tool Examples	When to Run	Action on Finding
SAST (Static Application Security Testing)	Semgrep, SonarQube, CodeQL	Every PR	Block merge on Critical/High
SCA (Software Composition Analysis)	Snyk, Dependabot, Trivy	Every build	Block on Critical CVEs
Container Scanning	Trivy, Grype, Anchore	After image build	Block deploy on Critical
Secrets Detection	Gitleaks, TruffleHog, detect-secrets	Every commit (pre-commit + CI)	Block immediately
DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing)	OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite	Post-deploy to staging	Warn, create ticket
IaC Scanning	Checkov, tfsec, KICS	Every PR with infra changes	Block on High severity
License Compliance	FOSSA, Snyk License	On dependency changes	Warn on copyleft in proprietary code

Step 6: Optimize Pipeline Performance

Caching Strategy:

• Cache dependency installation (node_modules, .venv, .m2)
• Cache build artifacts between stages
• Cache Docker layers (use BuildKit, multi-stage builds)
• Cache test fixtures and compiled test assets

Parallelization:

• Run lint, unit tests, and security scans in parallel
• Split test suites across multiple runners (test sharding)
• Build multi-arch images in parallel

Skip Conditions:

• Skip integration tests for docs-only changes
• Skip build for changes that only affect tests
• Use path filters to run only relevant pipeline stages in monorepos

Output Format

Present the pipeline design as:

## Pipeline Summary
- **Application:** [name and type]
- **CI/CD Platform:** [platform]
- **Deployment Strategy:** [strategy]
- **Target Environment:** [environment]
- **Estimated Total Duration:** [time]

## Pipeline Stages
[Visual stage diagram or ordered list with details]

## Deployment Strategy Details
[Strategy specifics, traffic splitting, rollback triggers]

## Security Gates
[Which scans, where they run, pass/fail criteria]

## Rollback Procedure
[Step-by-step rollback instructions]

## Performance Optimizations
[Caching, parallelization, skip conditions]

## Recommendations
[Prioritized list of improvements]

Quality Checklist

Before finalizing, verify:

• Every stage has a clear failure action (fail fast, warn, or rollback)
• Rollback procedure is documented and tested
• Security scanning covers dependencies, containers, secrets, and IaC
• Pipeline can complete in under 15 minutes for the fast path
• Caching is configured for dependencies and build artifacts
• Secrets are injected from a vault, never hardcoded in pipeline config
• Notifications are configured for failures and successful deploys
• Branch protection rules enforce pipeline passage before merge
• Artifact retention policy is defined (how long to keep old images/builds)
• Pipeline config is version-controlled alongside application code

Edge Cases

• Monorepo Pipelines: Use path-based triggers to only build/test affected services. Consider tools like Turborepo, Nx, or Bazel for dependency-aware builds.
• Database Migrations in CI: Run migrations in a separate stage. Ensure they are backward-compatible (expand-contract pattern). Never run destructive migrations automatically.
• Flaky Tests: Quarantine flaky tests into a separate non-blocking job. Track flakiness rate. Auto-retry with caution (max 1 retry, alert on repeated flakes).
• Long-Running Integration Tests: Move to a separate pipeline triggered after merge, not on every PR. Use parallelization and test selection to keep PR pipelines fast.
• Multi-Environment Promotion: Use a promotion model (dev -> staging -> production) with manual approval gates for production. Never auto-deploy to production without verification in a lower environment.
• Pipeline-as-Code Drift: Ensure pipeline definitions are reviewed in PRs like application code. Use reusable workflow templates to avoid duplication across repos.
• Secrets Rotation During Deploy: Ensure deployments can handle mid-deploy secret rotation. Use short-lived tokens where possible.