Why this lesson matters

Understand deployment checklist and use it correctly in an App Router project. A production Next.js release is an immutable build plus validated environment configuration. Type checking, tests and next build must pass before the runtime image starts serving traffic.

How to reason about it

  • For Deployment Checklist, the outcome to verify is: Do not call a release production-ready unless build and quality gates pass on the same tree.
  • In Deployment Checklist, keep this failure controlled: Building inside a live server with changing dependencies or exposing server-only environment values to NEXT_PUBLIC creates avoidable release and security risk.
  • Deployment Checklist practice target: Run a clean production build from locked dependencies, start it with production environment values and verify a health route plus one key page.

Practical walkthrough

In the Deployment Checklist walkthrough: Do not call a release production-ready unless build and quality gates pass on the same tree.

terminalbash
npm ci
npm run typecheck
npm test
npm run build
npm start

Practice it yourself

Practice

Deployment Checklist exercise

Run a clean production build from locked dependencies, start it with production environment values and verify a health route plus one key page.

  • Record the expected result before execution
  • Test one valid path and one lesson-specific failure path
  • Explain in two lines which boundary owns the decision

Summary