kalilurrahman/kr-claudiator-skills/environment-management

LOCAL (developer machine)
  Purpose: Fast iteration, debugging
  Infrastructure: Docker Compose
  Data: Seed data or anonymised production subset
  Access: Developer only
 
DEVELOPMENT / PREVIEW (per PR or per feature)
  Purpose: Integration testing, product review
  Infrastructure: Short-lived, auto-provisioned per PR
  Data: Seed data
  Access: Developer + product team
 
STAGING
  Purpose: Pre-production validation; QA; load testing
  Infrastructure: Production-equivalent (same instance types, same config)
  Data: Anonymised production clone (refreshed weekly)
  Access: Engineering + QA + product
 
PRODUCTION
  Purpose: Real users
  Infrastructure: Full HA, multi-AZ
  Data: Real customer data
  Access: Break-glass only; all changes via CD pipeline

# .github/workflows/preview.yml
name: Preview Environment
 
on:
  pull_request:
    types: [opened, synchronize]
 
jobs:
  deploy-preview:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
 
      - name: Deploy preview environment
        id: deploy
        run: |
          ENV_NAME="preview-pr-${{ github.event.number }}"
          
          # Render/Railway/Fly.io one-command preview deploy
          fly deploy             --app "myapp-${ENV_NAME}"             --image "ghcr.io/org/app:${{ github.sha }}"             --env "ENV_NAME=${ENV_NAME}"             --env "DATABASE_URL=${{ secrets.PREVIEW_DB_URL }}"
          
          URL="https://myapp-${ENV_NAME}.fly.dev"
          echo "preview_url=${URL}" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT
 
      - name: Comment preview URL on PR
        uses: actions/github-script@v7
        with:
          script: |
            github.rest.issues.createComment({
              issue_number: context.issue.number,
              owner: context.repo.owner,
              repo: context.repo.repo,
              body: `🚀 Preview environment deployed: ${{ steps.deploy.outputs.preview_url }}
 
This environment will be automatically destroyed when the PR is closed.`
            })
 
  teardown-preview:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    on:
      pull_request:
        types: [closed]
    steps:
      - run: fly apps destroy "myapp-preview-pr-${{ github.event.number }}" --yes

# Environment-specific configuration using environment variables
# Never hardcode environment names in business logic
import os
from pydantic_settings import BaseSettings
class Settings(BaseSettings):
    # Required in all environments
    database_url: str
    redis_url: str
    secret_key: str
    
    # Defaults differ by environment
    debug: bool = False
    log_level: str = "INFO"
    
    # Feature toggles (can differ by environment)
    enable_new_checkout: bool = False
    
    class Config:
        env_file = ".env"
        env_file_encoding = "utf-8"
settings = Settings()
# Environment detection — use a single ENV variable
ENVIRONMENT = os.environ.get("ENVIRONMENT", "development")
# Never do this:
# if os.environ.get("STAGING"): ...
# if hostname == "staging.example.com": ...

## Staging ↔ Production Parity Requirements
 
### Infrastructure Parity
-[ ] Same instance type family (staging can be smaller but same family)
-[ ] Same number of replicas (staging can use min=1)
-[ ] Same database engine version
-[ ] Same cache version (Redis, Memcached)
-[ ] Same message broker (Kafka version)
 
### Configuration Parity
-[ ] Same environment variables (with staging-appropriate values)
-[ ] Same secrets rotation process
-[ ] Same network topology (VPC, subnets, security groups — smaller scale)
-[ ] Same TLS configuration
 
### Process Parity
-[ ] Staging deploys via same CI/CD pipeline as production
-[ ] Staging uses same IaC (Terraform) — different workspace, same code
-[ ] Database migrations run in staging before production
-[ ] Same monitoring and alerting (different thresholds acceptable)
 
## Common Parity Gaps (and why they hurt)
-Different DB versions: query behaviour differs
-Different instance sizes with different memory: OOM in prod but not staging
-Mock external services in staging: integration bugs reach production
-Shared DB between staging and dev: data contamination