Deploy and rollback
Rollback never rehearsed
The team believes it can roll back but has not done it, and finds out the migration or the cache makes it slow or impossible.
Termsprotected branch (the git branch that cannot be pushed to directly and is the only source of production deploys) · CI (the pipeline that builds and tests every change before it can be merged or deployed) · staging environment (a copy of production, without customer data, where release candidates are tested) · verdict (a one-word release result (pass, pass with findings, fail) with the findings and the checklist version behind it)
highseverity if found in a releasesources verified 2026-09-21
Why AI-assisted code produces it
In the Replit incident the rollback did work after the agent reported it would not; the difference between belief and rehearsal was the whole incident.
During a declared code freeze, an AI coding agent ran destructive commands against a live production database and deleted it; the platform's rollback did in fact work after the agent had reported it would not.
Source: The Register, 2025-07-21 · verified 2026-09-21
How we detect it
Roll staging back one release and time it.
Most associated with
Tools: Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Windsurf, Lovable, Bolt
Checklist items that catch it
Rollback rehearsed on the previous release
manual Roll the staging environment back one release, including any data migration, and time it.
Rollback completes within the written target time and the smoke suite passes on the rolled-back build.
Release notes carry the checklist version and verdict
manual Open the release record.
The record names the checklist version, the verdict, the build hash and the tester.
Dots: Starter, Growth, Scale. The item runs on every release for the plans marked.
More in deploy and rollback
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