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vly’s default flow is Preview → Production. For teams that want a “shared QA” gate between, add a Staging environment.

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When you need staging

Multiple developers

Each PR has its own preview, but a shared staging is where they integrate before production.

QA team

QA tests against a known stable environment, separate from individual PR previews.

Customer demos

Sales team demos against staging — predictable URL, controlled state.

Regulatory review

Compliance reviews of new features before they hit production.

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Standard 3-stage flow

Promotion:
  • Preview → Staging: open a PR, merge to a staging branch (or click “Promote to staging” in vly’s UI).
  • Staging → Production: manual promotion after sign-off.

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Setting up

1

Add the staging environment

Settings → Environments → Add. Name: staging.
2

Configure secrets

Production keys (so it behaves like production) OR test keys (so payments / emails are sandboxed).
3

Add a staging domain

staging.yourapp.com → CNAME to the staging environment.
4

Document the promotion process

Who can promote, when, what gates apply. Add to your team’s playbook.

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Promotion gates

For higher-trust environments:
  • PR review required (via GitHub integration).
  • Test suite passing (GitHub Actions).
  • Automated smoke tests against staging before promoting to production.
  • Manual sign-off by a release manager.

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Tips

For most apps, two environments is enough. Don’t add staging until the team’s coordination cost outweighs preview’s parallelism.
Keep staging fresh. A long-lived staging that drifts from production becomes useless. Promote at least weekly.

Environments

Adding and configuring.

Rollback

The escape hatch.

Preview deployments

Per-change previews.
Last modified on April 18, 2026