nself deploy

Deploy the nSelf stack to a named remote environment over SSH. Pairs with nself promote for environment-promotion workflows.

Quick start

# Deploy to production
nself deploy prod

# Deploy to staging
nself deploy staging

# Check what would be deployed (dry run)
nself deploy prod --dry-run

Synopsis

nself deploy <ENV_NAME> [FLAGS]

Description

nself deploy SSHes into the host configured for the target environment, copies the generated Docker Compose config, pulls updated images, and restarts services with zero-downtime rolling logic. The environment name is a positional argument — any environment defined in your env cascade (e.g. staging, prod, eu-prod) is a valid target.

Before deploying, the CLI runs nself doctor against the target environment and blocks if critical checks fail. Pass --skip-doctor to bypass (not recommended for production).

After a successful deploy, run nself deploy prod status to verify all services are healthy, or use nself promote staging prod to promote a tested staging build forward.

Subcommands

nself deploy <env>

Deploy to the named environment. The env name maps to NSELF_DEPLOY_HOST and SSH key configuration.

nself deploy prod
nself deploy staging
nself deploy eu-prod

nself deploy <env> status

Check the live health of a deployed environment without running a new deploy.

nself deploy prod status
# ✓ PostgreSQL healthy (5 connections)
# ✓ Hasura healthy (GraphQL endpoint responding)
# ✓ Auth healthy
# ✓ Nginx healthy (SSL valid)

nself deploy <env> logs

Tail service logs from the remote host.

nself deploy prod logs
nself deploy prod logs --service postgres --tail 100

nself deploy <env> rollback

Roll back to the previous deploy on the remote host.

nself deploy prod rollback

nself deploy <env> promote

Promote the current environment to another (shorthand for nself promote).

nself deploy staging promote prod

nself deploy <env> check-access

Verify SSH connectivity and permissions for the target host before a deploy.

nself deploy prod check-access
# ✓ SSH connection to 5.75.235.42 successful
# ✓ Docker accessible on remote
# ✓ Required directories writable

nself deploy <env> health

Run a post-deploy health check on the remote environment.

nself deploy prod health

Flags

Environment variables

Examples

Full production deploy workflow

# Verify SSH access first
nself deploy prod check-access

# Preview what changes
nself deploy prod --dry-run

# Deploy
nself deploy prod

# Verify all services healthy
nself deploy prod health

Promote staging to production

# Test on staging first
nself deploy staging
nself deploy staging health

# Promote the tested build to prod
nself promote staging prod

Roll back a bad deploy

nself deploy prod rollback
# Reverts to the previous compose snapshot on the remote host

Deploy with a custom SSH key

nself deploy prod --ssh-key ~/.ssh/nself_deploy_ed25519

Exit codes

• 0 — deploy succeeded, all services healthy
• 1 — deploy failed (SSH error, image pull failed, service unhealthy)
• 2 — doctor check failed and --skip-doctor not passed
• 3 — invalid arguments or unknown environment name

Related

• nself promote — promote one environment to another
• nself doctor — run diagnostics before deploying
• nself dr — disaster recovery and backup operations
• nself down — stop all services on the current environment