A log of progress for the week of September 8, 2025.
After laying the groundwork for automated database migrations last week, the goal this week was to make that pipeline truly production-ready. This meant moving from a functional system to a fully hardened, reliable, and secure one. It was all about building confidence in the automation.
Bulletproof Migrations
The automated migration system received a major security and reliability upgrade. The connection to the database was enhanced to use the highest level of TLS security: sslmode=verify-full. This not only encrypts the connection but also verifies the server’s identity against the provided RDS certificate, preventing man-in-the-middle attacks.
To ensure reliability, I added smoke tests, migration checksums, and post-push hooks for monitoring the entire build and deployment process.
Professionalizing the Workflow
The focus then shifted to the developer experience and repository security. The goal was to catch errors and potential security issues before they ever become a problem. I implemented:
- CI/CD Validation: A new GitHub Actions workflow now runs automatically on every push, performing checks like linting and type-checking to maintain code quality across the board.
- Automated Secret Scanning: I introduced pre-commit hooks that automatically scan for secrets (like API keys or passwords) before any code is even committed. This is a critical security measure that prevents accidental leaks.
- Security Documentation: A SECURITY.md runbook was created, providing clear guidance to developers on security best practices within the project.
This week’s work was all about building a ‘safety net.’ With a hardened CI/CD pipeline and automated security checks, we can now develop and deploy features with a much higher degree of confidence.