# Deployment Pipeline

A Deployment Pipeline defines the order of [environments](/agent-manager/docs/next/concepts/environment/.md) that agents in a [project](/agent-manager/docs/next/concepts/project/.md) are allowed to move through. For example, requiring a built artifact to be deployed to staging before that deployment can be promoted to production. Every project is bound to exactly one deployment pipeline.

## Built on OpenChoreo's Deployment Pipeline Abstraction[​](#built-on-openchoreos-deployment-pipeline-abstraction "Direct link to Built on OpenChoreo's Deployment Pipeline Abstraction")

Agent Manager's deployment pipelines are [OpenChoreo Deployment Pipelines](https://openchoreo.dev/docs/concepts/platform-abstractions/#deploymentpipeline). OpenChoreo defines a DeploymentPipeline as something that "defines the allowed progression paths for applications moving through environments", representing "the organization's software delivery process as a declarative configuration, encoding promotion rules and quality gates." A pipeline can specify parallel paths and conditional progressions based on application characteristics, not just a single linear chain of environments.

## How It Governs Promotion[​](#how-it-governs-promotion "Direct link to How It Governs Promotion")

* An agent version is deployed to one environment at a time, following the order the project's pipeline allows.
* Moving an agent from one environment to the next is a **promotion** — a distinct, permissioned action (`amp:agent:promote`) from the initial deploy.
* Because deploying to a production environment is a separate permission (`amp:agent:deploy-production`) from deploying to a non-production one (`amp:agent:deploy-non-production`), a pipeline's promotion order is also an access-control boundary: someone can be allowed to push to staging without being allowed to push straight to production.

## Relationship to Projects and Environments[​](#relationship-to-projects-and-environments "Direct link to Relationship to Projects and Environments")

A **[Project](/agent-manager/docs/next/concepts/project/.md)** references exactly one deployment pipeline; the pipeline itself references the **[Environments](/agent-manager/docs/next/concepts/environment/.md)** it governs promotion across.