Apollo Production Checklist

Use this skill as a guidance-only readiness framework for Apollo integration deployments.

Use this skill when

• The team is preparing to deploy Apollo integration changes.
• You need pre-launch validation gates and rollback planning.
• You need a structured production-readiness audit.

Do not use this skill when

• The request is unrelated to deployment readiness.
• The user expects direct script execution from this skill.

Guardrails

• Treat this as planning and validation guidance; do not claim to run checks automatically.
• Never expose API keys or secrets in outputs.
• Require explicit go/no-go criteria before launch recommendation.

Readiness workflow

1. Define deployment scope

   • Features being released
   • Impacted services and dependencies
   • Rollout strategy (full, staged, canary)

2. Security and secrets checks

   • Confirm production secrets are in approved secret storage.
   • Verify least-privilege API access.
   • Confirm PII handling and log redaction policy.

3. Reliability checks

   • Validate retry strategy and timeout boundaries.
   • Confirm rate-limit handling and backoff behavior.
   • Define failure fallback and degradation behavior.

4. Observability checks

   • Ensure key metrics and error rates are tracked.
   • Define alert thresholds and on-call ownership.
   • Confirm health indicators and incident escalation path.

5. Operational readiness

   • Validate environment variables and release configuration.
   • Verify runbook, rollback steps, and communication plan.
   • Confirm post-deploy smoke-test checklist.

6. Go/no-go decision

   • List blocking issues (must-fix)
   • List warnings (acceptable with mitigation)
   • Declare launch recommendation with rationale

Deployment checklist

• [ ] Scope and release owner confirmed
• [ ] Secrets and API permissions verified
• [ ] Error handling and retry logic validated
• [ ] Rate-limit and timeout behavior reviewed
• [ ] Monitoring dashboards and alerts ready
• [ ] Rollback plan tested/documented
• [ ] Smoke-test plan prepared
• [ ] Stakeholder communication plan ready
• [ ] Go/no-go criteria documented

Output format

## Apollo Production Readiness Summary
- Release scope:
- Owner:
- Environment:

## Checklist Status
- Security:
- Reliability:
- Observability:
- Operations:

## Blocking Issues (Must Fix)
1.
2.

## Warnings (Mitigate)
1.
2.

## Rollback and Incident Plan
- Rollback trigger:
- Rollback steps:
- Incident owner:

## Recommendation
- Go/No-Go:
- Reasoning:
- Next actions: