Promote

Promote makes a ready version the production pointer. It is explicit. Merging to main does nothing unless your CI calls this API.

The first version on a new project becomes production automatically when it reaches ready (empty prod_version_id). Every later production change goes through promote.

Call

curl -sS -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ADMIN_TOKEN" \
  "$CELLP_URL/v1/projects/my-shop/versions/v-2026-08-30/promote"

You get back prod_version_id and prod_url. The prod Host (prod_url) now routes to that version.

The version must be ready. Archived versions need a wake first. 409 if it is not ready.

What happens

Promote is a saga with compensation:

1. Validate
2. Drain the old production route
3. Promote data-plane (offshoot) pointers
4. Compare-and-swap prod_version_id
5. Activate the new production route

If a step fails, cellp rolls the saga back in reverse. You should not see a split-brain prod pointer.

Cutover is designed to be short (seconds), not a multi-minute mesh drain.

What promote does not do

Promote is not a data merge:

• It does not copy rows or keys from the current production version into the version you promote if those writes happened after that version was forked.
• It does not rebase preview onto prod or replay prod traffic.
• It does point the prod Host at the promoted version’s existing D1/KV/R2/Queue state (whatever that version already had at preview time plus preview-only writes).

Example: prod takes orders after you opened a PR preview. Promoting the PR makes those new prod-only orders disappear from production — because prod becomes the preview bucket, not a merge of both. Design previews from staging, and read Preview data timeline.

After promote

• Old production stays around (ready or later idle-archived). It is your rollback candidate.
• New production will not be auto-archived.
• Preview URLs for other versions keep working.

Dashboard

On the version page: Promote. Same API.

CI pattern

Typical main pipeline:

1. Build + upload artifact as version sha-abc
2. Poll until ready
3. Run smoke against the version preview_url
4. POST …/promote
5. Smoke against prod_url

PR pipelines stop before step 4. See Deploy from CI.