Automate your first deploy so a failing test can't ship

You've been running your API on your own machine this whole roadmap, and you have no idea how to actually put it on the internet.

BeginnerRead 5 minDoing: an hour or two7 steps

▶ Start

What you'll have at the end

A pipeline that runs your test suite on every push and only deploys the build that passes

Before you start

You need

A backend project already on GitHub, here called orders-api, with a test suite that passes cleanly when you run it by hand, and a build you have already put live at least once yourself.

Not covered

Which host actually runs your API, or that host's own deploy command: this turns whatever way you already ship a build live into one step a failing test can never trigger.

Leans on

Wire the pipeline to every push

Trigger one pipeline run on every push
Make the first job run your real suite

Make the gate real

Make deploy wait on that job passing
Limit deploy to a genuine push to main
Move the deploy credential behind an approval

Prove it holds

Break a real test and watch deploy stop
Fix it, push, and confirm it went live

Where to go next

A health check lying about being ready

once a deploy job runs to completion, the next honest question is whether your own readiness check would actually catch one that started but never finished coming up

Does your rollback restore the last working version?

this pipeline stops most bad code before it ships; for the one build that still gets through, that's the recovery step

Checked 19 Aug 2026

Part of the Backend Deployment cookbook