Cowboy Deploy
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
A cowboy deploy is pushing to production with zero checks — no CI, no review, no staging, just SSH into prod and let it rip. Sometimes it's heroic (3am outage, need to move fast). Usually it's reckless.
Real Talk
A cowboy deploy is a deployment made without standard process: skipping CI, bypassing code review, or pushing directly from a developer machine. It's acceptable only in genuine emergencies with senior approval and follow-up documentation. Normalized cowboy deploys indicate a broken deploy pipeline or culture problem.
When You'll Hear This
"Stop cowboy deploying. Write a runbook and fix CI." / "One cowboy deploy a year is fine. Weekly is a culture problem."
Related Terms
Hotfix Friday
Hotfix Friday is when your team decides 5pm on Friday is a great time to push an emergency fix. It's also how you end up working the weekend.
Incident Response
Incident Response is the process your team follows when production breaks. Who gets paged? Who's the incident commander?
YOLO Deploy
A YOLO deploy is pushing code to production without testing it first because you're feeling brave (or reckless).