A staging release and a browser test suite
A staging copy of the platform now runs beside production, and a real browser walks sign-up, sign-in and the public pages against it before a build moves on.
Several bugs this month passed every unit test and only showed up on the live site: a live-updates stream that dropped after ten seconds, a sign-in loop, and server code that leaked into the browser bundle. Unit tests could not catch them because they only happen on a real deployment.
So we added a staging release. It runs beside production with its own database, cache and address.
Against it, an end-to-end suite drives a real browser. It loads the public pages and checks them for accessibility problems and server errors. It signs up a new account with an emailed code, keeps a live-updates stream open, signs out and back in, and checks that a forged sign-in link is refused.
The intended flow for a release is: deploy a build to staging, run the suite, then ship the same build to production. Current platform health is on the status page, and how we run the service is on the trust page.