Troubleshooting guide
Only one person knows how to deploy: A Practical Diagnostic Path
Only one person knows how to deploy can have several causes that look identical from the outside. Use this path to gather useful evidence without making the original problem harder to reproduce.
Record the symptom before changing it
Capture the exact screen, user role, time, device, and sequence that produces the issue. Note whether production differs from every tested environment occurs at the same time.
- Save exact error text
- Record the last known working date
- List recent code, content, vendor, DNS, or account changes
Separate reachability, data, and behavior
First confirm whether the affected system can be reached. Then confirm the expected record or content exists. Only then test the behavior supported by gitHub Actions and common CI platforms.
- Reachability check for health checks, release logs, and deployment evidence
- Data or content check related to cI/CD pipeline design and repair
- Behavior check for environment, secret, and configuration management
Use stop conditions
Stop and preserve evidence if a test could overwrite data, invalidate logs, lock out users, or remove the only working copy. Recovery work needs a known restore path before intrusive changes.
- No confirmed backup
- Unknown production ownership
- Security or payment data may be involved
Verify the repair in the real journey
A green technical check is not enough. Repeat the original journey, test a nearby edge case, and confirm the result from the perspective of teams that need safer builds, deployments, environments, and operational handoffs.
- CI/CD pipeline design and repair
- Release automation, rollback, and deployment verification
- Responsive and accessible web application delivery