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Deployment Lifecycle

A Switchboard deploy crosses local signing, Acurast compute, Hub funding, relay coordination, DNS, certificate issuance, gateway routing, and validator evidence. Diagnose failures by stage.

1. Local Project And Context​

proof switchboard init writes directory-local project config:

switchboard.json
.switchboard/

Named contexts live under ~/.switchboard/ and point at environment variable names for secrets.

2. Preflight​

proof switchboard preflight --quote checks the local and network prerequisites before spend:

  • signed network manifest
  • control-plane health
  • Hub RPCs
  • Acurast deploy identity
  • Polkadot payment identity
  • accepted quote asset
  • deploy runner availability

3. Dry Run​

Dry runs inspect the plan without deploying, funding, creating DNS, or mutating routes:

proof switchboard launch-demo --dry-run
proof switchboard deploy --yes --dry-run --json

deploy --yes --dry-run accepts --yes because it exercises the deployer confirmation path, but dry-run still avoids side effects.

4. Acurast Deployment​

The CLI prepares the runtime bundle and submits the job to Acurast. Node webserver deploys use the Node runtime path. Script/Cargo SSH deploys use the Shell runtime and require processors advertising Shell support.

For live bundle upload, the Acurast SDK path may require:

set -gx ACURAST_IPFS_URL '<ipfs upload endpoint>'
set -gx ACURAST_IPFS_API_KEY '<ipfs upload api key>'

5. Hub Quote Funding​

The control plane returns a signed quote. The CLI checks the quote and funds the Hub registry through the accepted payment asset. This is separate from Acurast compute spend.

6. Job-Signed Registration​

After the Acurast job starts, it signs the Switchboard registration material. The relay can submit that material and pay Hub gas, but it should not be able to forge job authority.

7. DNS And Job-Owned TLS​

Switchboard provisions DNS for the canonical endpoint. The job requests its own certificate through CSR plus DNS-01 authorization and keeps the TLS private key inside the Acurast runtime.

Customer hostnames add another DNS and certificate authorization layer.

8. Gateway Route Activation​

The gateway does L4/SNI passthrough. Deployment-intent route targets are based on fresh signed gateway upstream admission, not arbitrary job health metadata.

9. Validation And Settlement​

Validators probe the public endpoint and challenge path. Settlement is batched into scheduler windows; validators may report more frequently than Hub fulfillment is written.

10. Readback And Recovery​

Start with read-only commands:

proof switchboard status
proof switchboard deploy status
proof switchboard deploy doctor --report <report.json>

Use deploy resume --yes only when local workflow state says a single-replica resume is safe. The CLI refuses late funding by default unless --allow-late-funding is explicit.