Lecture 11 — Universal Ship Pipeline

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"Human confirmation is required exactly once — before every irreversible action." — Everything before Phase 6 is automated. Everything after is logged.

Core idea: How /autoresearch:ship takes any artifact from "ready" to "deployed" through an 8-phase pipeline with one mandatory human gate and automatic rollback.

Code examples: code/
Practice project: Project 06 — End-to-End Research Project

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The Problem

Shipping without a checklist means something always gets skipped: tests weren't run, the PR description is empty, the database migration isn't ready, no one documented the rollback procedure. The more confident you feel about a change, the more likely you are to skip the checks.

And when something goes wrong after shipping, there's no record of what was shipped or how to undo it.

The Solution

Phase 1: Identify    ← auto-detect what's being shipped (or --type to override)
Phase 2: Inventory   ← list everything that needs to ship
Phase 3: Checklist   ← generate domain-specific, mechanically verifiable checks
Phase 4: Prepare     ← build, test, changelog, version bump
Phase 5: Dry-run     ← simulate ship action without committing
Phase 6: ─── CONFIRM ───  ← MANDATORY HUMAN GATE (only human input in the pipeline)
Phase 7: Ship        ← execute the actual ship action
Phase 8: Verify+Log  ← post-ship health check → write ship-log.md

If all checks pass and --auto is set, Phase 6 auto-approves. Otherwise it always asks.

How It Works

1. Checklists are mechanically verifiable — no subjective items.

For code-pr:

- [ ] All tests passing (npm test)          ← exit code 0 = pass
- [ ] No TypeScript errors (tsc --noEmit)   ← exit code 0 = pass
- [ ] No lint errors (eslint src/)          ← exit code 0 = pass
- [ ] PR description written
- [ ] Breaking changes documented

No "looks good to me." Every item either passes its command or doesn't.

2. Nine ship types cover everything.

Type	What it does
code-pr	Push branch, create PR, request reviewers
code-release	Bump version, generate changelog, tag, GitHub release
deployment	Build, push container, deploy, health check
content	Validate, publish to CMS or static host, verify URL live
marketing-email	Final review, schedule send, verify unsubscribe link
marketing-campaign	Multi-channel launch checklist
sales	CRM update, email send, follow-up scheduling
research	Package findings, upload to archive, notify stakeholders
design	Export assets, upload to shared drive, notify design system

3. Rollback is always available.

Every ship action is logged in ship-log.md with enough information to undo it:

/autoresearch:ship --rollback

For code-pr: deletes the branch. For deployment: runs kubectl rollout undo. For content: reverts to previous version.

4. Key flags.

Flag	Purpose
--dry-run	Validate everything, don't actually ship
--auto	Auto-approve Phase 6 if all checks pass
--rollback	Undo the last ship action
--checklist-only	Check readiness only, don't proceed

What Changed

Manual shipping	Ship pipeline
Checklist exists in someone's head	Domain-specific checklist generated automatically
"Subjective: looks good"	Every check is exit code 0 or not
Rollback procedure: "figure it out"	--rollback always available, logged in ship-log.md
No record of what was shipped	ship-log.md records every ship action with timestamp

Try It

Run the ship checklist and rollback trigger:

cd docs/en/lectures/lecture-11-universal-ship-pipeline/code
python ship_checklist.py code-pr
python ship_checklist.py content
python rollback_trigger.py

Questions to think about:

1. After running ship_checklist.py content, did all checks pass? If not, what failed and why?
2. Add a new check to CHECKLISTS["code-pr"]: verify no .pyc files exist in the current directory. What command does this check run?
3. After running ship_checklist.py code-pr and then rollback_trigger.py — what rollback command is shown? Does it match the ship type?
4. If ship-log.md doesn't exist when rollback_trigger.py runs, what happens? What does this tell you about the precondition for rollback?

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Next: Lecture 12 — Overnight Runs & Advanced Patterns