Alchemist: Releases, the Deploy Gate, and Rollback
How finished work goes live on Alchemist: the deploy gate's Continuous, Manual, and Scheduled modes, release-candidate QA, release notes, and one-step rollback.
Merging work and putting it live are two separate steps. The agent merges finished work into your project’s default branch; the deploy gate decides when that work reaches your live app. This page covers the gate, the checks you can put in front of a release, and how to undo one.
The deploy gate
Open your project’s Releases tab and find the Deploy gate panel. It has three modes:
| Mode | What happens to merged work |
|---|---|
| Continuous | Each merge is built and goes live as soon as the build finishes. |
| Manual | Merges keep landing and are built, but nothing goes live until someone clicks Deploy now. |
| Scheduled | Merged work is released on a cadence you set: every N hours, or at set times of day in your timezone. |
New projects start in Manual. The project’s first deploy still goes out on its own so the app comes up, but every release after that waits for a person. A daily release digest lists what is waiting.
The panel shows what is pending, along with release notes generated from the changes since the last release, so whoever clicks Deploy now can see what they are shipping.
Release-candidate QA
When work is waiting to go live, the platform cuts a release candidate: a fixed snapshot of exactly what would ship. A QA agent can check that candidate and write a report (use Start QA or Re-run QA in the Release-candidate QA panel). The Deploy gate panel’s What the QA agent will check list shows the steps drafted from the pending changes.
Under Quality gate you choose how much weight the report carries:
- Advisory (default): the report is there to read; it never blocks a release.
- Require a passing QA verdict to release: a release needs the current candidate’s QA to have passed. Deploy now can still override a failed or missing pass, and every override is recorded in the audit trail.
- Auto-release when QA passes: in Manual or Scheduled mode, a passing QA releases the work on its own, optionally after a soak period of up to 24 hours (1,440 minutes).
The quality gate checks the QA agent’s verdict. It does not run your own test suite: the platform build compiles and type-checks your code, but does not run your tests. If your app has a test suite that must pass before a release, run it on every change (for example in a ticket’s acceptance check or your own CI) and keep the gate in Manual mode so releases only go out after it passes.
Rolling back
The Roll back panel lists earlier completed deploys. Rolling back puts a previous deploy’s already-built image back live. Nothing is rebuilt, so it takes about as long as any rollout.
A rollback also pins the project. New work keeps merging, but none of it goes live until you click Resume deploys, so the next merge can’t quietly re-ship the change you just rolled back. Resuming can also release anything that was held while the project was pinned. Rollbacks, pins, and resumes all appear in the panel’s Audit trail.
A rollback restores code, not data. Database changes and uploaded files are not reverted. See Runtime, Data, and Regions for how data is backed up.