deployment-pipeline-design Skill (wshobson) for Claude Code

Helps Claude design multi-stage CI/CD pipelines with approval gates, canary or blue-green rollouts, health checks and rollback plans.

Installs: 14K; on skills.sh
Stars: 42.1K; on GitHub
Files: 2; besides SKILL.md
Updated: Oct 2026; last repo commit

You describe your app, deploy target, environments and rollout needs. Claude then proposes pipeline stages, gate rules, a deployment strategy (rolling, blue-green, canary or feature flags), health checks and a rollback plan. SKILL.md lists the outputs as pipeline config, strategy, health checks, gates and a rollback plan.

The skill is advice and example config. The examples in its reference files use GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure Pipelines, Argo Rollouts and kubectl. Claude only runs them if you ask it to, so review any command before it touches a cluster.

Good for

Platform and DevOps engineers designing a new release pipeline
Teams adding approval gates or canary rollouts to an existing pipeline
Developers debugging a pipeline whose stages pass but production misbehaves

Install deployment-pipeline-design

Claude Code

Copy this prompt.

Install the deployment-pipeline-design skill in Claude Code. Run this command:

npx skills add wshobson/agents --skill deployment-pipeline-design

Then check that it loaded and tell me how to use it.

2
Paste it into Claude Code. It shows the change and asks before running it.

Requires Node.js.

The README says the skills routes install a skill without the plugin's agents, commands or hooks. Pick the plugin only if you want the whole cicd-automation set.

Built from the package data we hold. Not yet tested by us. Source.

What's in the skill

When it loads

Design multi-stage CI/CD pipelines with approval gates, security checks, and deployment orchestration. Use this skill when designing zero-downtime deployment pipelines, implementing canary rollout strategies, setting up multi-environment promotion workflows, or debugging failed deployment gates in CI/CD.

Sections in SKILL.md

Purpose
Input / Output
What You Provide
What This Skill Produces
When to Use
Detailed patterns and worked examples
Troubleshooting
Health check passes in pipeline but service is unhealthy in production
Canary deployment never promotes to 100%
Staging deploy succeeds but production job never starts
Docker layer cache busted on every run causing slow builds
Rollback leaves database migrations applied to old code
Advanced Topics
Related Skills

Key facts

Author: wshobson
Repository: wshobson/agents
Installs on skills.sh: 14,035 as of 2026-11-02
GitHub stars: 42,081 for the whole wshobson/agents repo
License: MIT (repo README and cicd-automation plugin.json)
Last repo commit: 2026-10-30
What is inside: 3 files including SKILL.md: references/details.md and references/advanced-strategies.md. It bundles no scripts.
skills.sh audits: Gen Agent Trust Hub: pass; Socket: pass; Snyk: pass
Part of: The cicd-automation plugin (the repo has 5 agents, 1 command and 4 skills in that folder)

What it includes

Stages, job order, parallelism and caching
SKILL.md says it produces stage definitions, job dependencies, parallelism and a caching strategy from the app type, target and environment layout you give it.
Try: “Design a staging-to-production pipeline for a Node service on Kubernetes with a manual approval before prod.”
Pipeline design
Manual, time-based, multi-approver and metric gates
details.md shows four gate patterns: manual approval in GitHub Actions, time-based in GitLab CI, multi-approver in Azure Pipelines and an automated Argo Rollouts metric gate.
Approval gates
Rolling, blue-green, canary and feature flags
A decision table and examples for four strategies. The blue-green and canary examples use kubectl and Argo Rollouts commands.
Deployment strategies
Shallow versus deep readiness checks and a verify script
Explains why a shallow ping can pass while the service is unhealthy, and includes a post-deployment verification script that calls a /health/ready endpoint with curl.
Health checks
Automatic and manual rollback steps
Covers kubectl rollout undo, rollback on failed checks and migration rollback with undo scripts.
Rollback plan
Five common failures and fixes
SKILL.md covers a health check that passes but the service is unhealthy, a canary that never promotes, a production job that never starts, a busted Docker layer cache and a rollback that leaves migrations applied.
Troubleshooting
Platform configs, multi-region canary, migrations, freeze windows
advanced-strategies.md has full pipelines for GitHub Actions, GitLab CI and Azure Pipelines, multi-region canary, expand/contract database migrations, a deployment freeze check script and a Slack notification script.
Advanced strategies

From the official docs

Permissions

Medium risk

The skill bundles no scripts, but its examples include commands that can deploy to and change a Kubernetes cluster. Review each command before Claude runs it.

What it can do

Read your data
Create and change things
Delete things
Read-only mode

Watch out for

Examples include kubectl, docker and migration commands
The references show kubectl apply, rollout undo, scale to zero, docker push and Flyway undo. Do not let an agent run them against production without reading them. github.com
One example drops a database column
advanced-strategies.md shows an ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN statement in the contract step of an expand/contract migration. SKILL.md says destructive migrations wait until the old code is fully retired. github.com

Security advisories

No published security advisories as of Nov 2, 2026.

Technical details

Turning on read-only	No read-only switch is documented. Ask Claude to propose config without running it.
Talks to	Example commands call kubectl, docker, curl and cloud CLIs against your own cluster, registry and CI
Sign-in and keys	The examples reference CI secrets such as a Slack webhook and registry tokens. Those belong to your own CI system.
Scopes	Claude writes pipeline files and scripts in your project when you ask The plugin route adds 5 agents and 1 command from the cicd-automation folder

Questions

What does the deployment-pipeline-design skill do?

It guides Claude through designing a CI/CD pipeline: stages, approval gates, a rollout strategy, health checks and rollback. You give it your app type, target, environments and rollout needs, and it produces config and a plan.

How do I install it?

Use the install box above. The skills CLI route installs only this skill. The Claude Code and Codex plugin routes install the whole cicd-automation plugin, which also adds agents and a command.

Does it deploy anything for me?

SKILL.md describes design output, not deployment. The reference files do contain kubectl, Argo Rollouts, Flyway and docker push commands as examples, so check any command Claude proposes before you run it against a real cluster or registry.

Does it need an API key or other setup?

The skill itself does not. The example pipelines refer to secrets such as a Slack webhook and registry or cloud credentials, which belong to your own CI system.

Which CI systems does it cover?

GitHub Actions, GitLab CI and Azure Pipelines have full examples in advanced-strategies.md. SKILL.md also points to the separate github-actions-templates and gitlab-ci-patterns skills for implementation detail, and secrets-management for secrets.

Is it safe to install?

It bundles no scripts. The risk comes from the example commands in its references, which can deploy, scale or delete Kubernetes resources and run database migrations if you or Claude execute them. Read each command first.

Information

updated Nov 2, 2026

Repository: wshobson/agents
Folder: plugins/cicd-automation/skills/deployment-pipeline-design

wshobson/agents skills.sh

Sources

Docs, issue trackers and discussions this page is built from.

Show all 6

Using skills in Claude · support.claude.com
wshobson/agents README · github.com
SKILL.md · github.com
details.md · github.com
advanced-strategies.md · github.com
cicd-automation plugin.json · github.com