Publishing | Cofounder Docs
Publishing
Cofounder has two separate ship steps:
- Publish to staging (preview) — put finished agent work into the shared review environment
- Publish to production — promote what is already on staging to the live app or website
For the staging step, the Engineer (or another coding agent) can request a deploy when the work is ready. You approve that handoff as Publish to Staging. For production, you (or Cofounder) use the workspace Publish flow.
Staging Vs Production
Staging is the shared place to review and test changes before customers see them.
- it is the default review surface for the managed app and marketing site
- it is where you check that a change looks and behaves right after an agent finishes work
- for app work, it can use a separate staging backend so review does not touch live data
Production is what real users hit.
- it is the live app or website
- only promote to production after staging looks good
- for app work, it continues using the production backend
The Two Steps
1. Publish to staging
How it works at a high level:
- An agent finishes work in its sandbox.
- The agent requests a deploy for the app or marketing target.
- Cofounder prepares the handoff and asks you to approve.
- In the agent workspace, approve with Publish to Staging (or reject).
- On approval, the change lands on staging.
Once staging is updated:
- the managed staging / preview deployment refreshes for that target
- for app work, staging continues to use the staging backend
- for database migrations, the staging apply path can run after the change reaches staging
Requesting a deploy does not publish production. It only ships work into staging.
2. Publish to production
Publishing to production is how changes move from staging to the live app or website.
You can publish from the publish button in Canvas, or ask Cofounder to publish for you.
In either case, Cofounder runs the publish flow for the app or marketing target you selected, and gives you a place to review readiness before the live environment updates.
Once production is updated:
- the live app or website reflects the published changes
- for app migrations included in that publish, production migrations can run after the live promote
What Agents Should Use
| Goal | Flow |
|---|---|
| Ship finished agent work to staging | Request a deploy, then approve Publish to Staging |
| Ship staging to production | Workspace Publish / ask Cofounder to publish |
After finishing code changes, agents should request a deploy as the normal handoff into staging. Staging is the review step. Production is the live promote.
Environments
Publishing uses the staging and production environments that Cofounder sets up during onboarding.