5. Render deployment

Stage 5 creates a service on Render from the repository stage 4 pushed to, and starts its first deploy. Render is the only deployment target in version 1.

Since 1.1.0, a project whose .env.prodpilot names a service that still exists is redeployed: the pushed commit is deployed to that service instead of a second one being created, and the service’s environment values on Render are left as they are. A project with no stored service, or whose stored service was deleted, gets a new one, as below. If a redeploy then fails the smoke test, the service is rolled back.

How each stack is deployed

Stack	Render service	Build command	Start command	Answers on
Node.js with Express	Web service, Node runtime, free plan	npm install	npm start	/health
React with Vite	Static site, publishing dist	npm install && npm run build	none	/

This mapping is the one used to deploy the 684 projects the gate’s model was trained on, so the deploy and the data behind the gate agree on how a stack runs. A built front end has no process to start, and deploying one as a web service failed every time, so React projects go out as static sites.

The request

POST https://api.render.com/v1/services, with the shape taken from Render’s published API reference. For an Express project:

{
  "type": "web_service",
  "name": "<repository name>",
  "ownerId": "<your workspace id>",
  "repo": "https://github.com/<owner>/<repository>",
  "branch": "main",
  "envVars": [{ "key": "PORT", "value": "..." }],
  "serviceDetails": {
    "runtime": "node",
    "plan": "free",
    "envSpecificDetails": { "buildCommand": "npm install", "startCommand": "npm start" }
  }
}

The workspace id is looked up once from /owners, since the credential store holds only the API key.

Secrets travel one way

The sealed values go in envVars in this request and nowhere else. The sealed file was never staged, so by this point the values exist only on your machine and in the request body.

What is stored

Render answers with the service and the first deploy. Three identifiers are written to the project’s gitignored .env.prodpilot, so later stages, and later runs, do not have to ask again:

Key	Holds
PRODPILOT_SERVICE_ID	The Render service
PRODPILOT_DEPLOY_ID	The most recent deploy
PRODPILOT_SERVICE_URL	The live URL

The live URL is read from the service details, where Render puts it. See Configuration files.

An error from Render stops the stage with the method, the path, the HTTP status and Render’s own message.