CI/CD Pipeline from Scratch: Ship Code to Production in Under a Week

Shipping code manually is slow, error-prone, and does not scale. If your team is still using FTP uploads, running scripts by hand, or spending hours on deployment day, a CI/CD pipeline will change how you work permanently.

What Is CI/CD and Why It Matters

CI (Continuous Integration) means every code change is automatically tested. If a developer pushes broken code, the pipeline fails immediately before it reaches production.

CD (Continuous Delivery) means tested code is automatically packaged and deployed to staging, and to production with a single click.

The Stack We Use

• GitHub Actions – free CI/CD runner built into GitHub
• Docker – containerize the application for consistent environments
• Amazon ECR – store Docker images
• Amazon ECS Fargate – run containers without managing servers

Day 1-2: Containerize Your Application

Start by creating a Dockerfile in your project root. Use a multi-stage build to keep the final image small:

FROM node:20-alpine AS builder
WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm ci --only=production
COPY . .
RUN npm run build

FROM node:20-alpine
WORKDIR /app
COPY --from=builder /app/dist ./dist
EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["node", "dist/index.js"]

Day 3-4: GitHub Actions Workflow

Create .github/workflows/deploy.yml. The workflow has two jobs: test (runs on every push) and deploy (runs only on merges to main):

name: Build and Deploy
on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm test
  deploy:
    needs: test
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Build and push to ECR
        run: |
          docker build -t $ECR_URI:$GITHUB_SHA .
          docker push $ECR_URI:$GITHUB_SHA
      - name: Deploy to ECS
        run: aws ecs update-service --cluster prod --service myapp --force-new-deployment

Day 5-7: Staging Gate and Monitoring

Add a staging environment as a mandatory gate before production. Use GitHub Environments with required approvers. Configure ECS health checks so failed deployments roll back automatically. Add Slack notifications so your team knows immediately when a build passes or fails.

What You Have at the End of Week 1