Launch checklist

Deploying the services is half the launch. This is the other half — the wiring and verification that turns a running instance into one that's safe to point at real users. Provider-agnostic: it applies whether you deployed on Railway, Docker, or your own infrastructure.

Work top to bottom; every step ends with a check.

1. Instance is healthy

curl -s https://api.yourdomain.com/v1/health

• status is "healthy" — migration_pending means a migration track is behind (run pnpm db:migrate); degraded means a component is down (check components).
• components.worker.status is up — the worker heartbeats through Redis; down means journeys will enroll but never execute.
• API_PUBLIC_URL is your real public URL (it's baked into every tracking link, unsubscribe link, and webhook you provision below — a loopback or stale value here poisons all three).

2. First admin exists, sign-up is closed

Public sign-up is closed by design; the first admin comes from you.

• STUDIO_ADMIN_EMAIL was set before first boot (the API mints the admin once, on an empty user table — password from STUDIO_ADMIN_PASSWORD, else generated and printed ONCE in the boot log), or you ran hogsend studio admin create with the instance env loaded.
• You can sign in at https://api.yourdomain.com/studio.

3. Sending domain is verified (email actually delivers)

• Domain added + DNS records applied: hogsend domain add yourdomain.com, then hogsend domain check until verified. The full fresh-domain walkthrough (DKIM, inbound replies, ~30 minutes) is Production email on a fresh domain.
• Test mode: with EMAIL_FROM/EMAIL_DOMAIN set, sends redirect to your own inbox until the domain verifies, then go live automatically (HOGSEND_TEST_MODE=auto). Confirm you're not still forcing HOGSEND_TEST_MODE=true from testing.
• Send one real email to yourself and check the DKIM signature (d=yourdomain.com in the headers).

4. Wire the PostHog event loop — hogsend connect posthog

If PostHog is an event source for your journeys, this is the step that makes PostHog deliver events to your instance. It cannot complete against localhost — it belongs HERE, after deploy, not in local setup.

hogsend connect posthog --url https://api.yourdomain.com

Run it from your laptop (the OAuth consent opens a browser and the callback lands on 127.0.0.1 — never from SSH). It authorizes via PostHog OAuth (no keys pasted), stores the credential on the instance, mints the webhook secret, and creates the destination in your PostHog project — then tells you exactly what it created (destination id, target URL, filter, auth header, dashboard link).

• If you connected during local setup, the destination already exists in PostHog — disabled, pointing at the CHANGEME.yourdomain.com placeholder. Go live with one command (swaps the URL and enables it):

  hogsend connect posthog --provision-only --url https://api.yourdomain.com

• Verify: fire an identified event in PostHog and watch it arrive (hogsend events <that-user-id> --json shows the user's ingested events, or check the journey enrollment in Studio).

• Headless/CI alternative (no browser): set POSTHOG_PERSONAL_API_KEY on the instance — person reads and loop provisioning work automatically.

• Person reads (per-user timezone resolution, property conditions) need the OAuth credential or a personal key — the phc_ project key is write-only by PostHog's design.

5. Keys and webhook secrets

• A data-plane key exists for your product code: an instance that never ran pnpm bootstrap mints one ingest-scoped key on FIRST boot and prints it once to the deploy log (grab it there; opt out with HOGSEND_BOOTSTRAP_API_KEY=false), or create one via POST /v1/admin/api-keys with scopes: ["ingest"].
• ADMIN_API_KEY (or a stored full-admin key) is set for CLI/admin access against the deployed instance.
• Email provider webhooks are wired for bounce/complaint suppression: Resend → https://api.yourdomain.com/v1/webhooks/email/resend with RESEND_WEBHOOK_SECRET; Postmark equivalents under /v1/webhooks/email/postmark.

6. Final smoke — one real journey end-to-end

hogsend doctor --json          # keys, schema, components — one call
hogsend events send test.signup --email you@yourdomain.com --json

• The journey enrolls (Studio → Journeys, or hogsend journeys list --json).
• The email lands in your inbox, DKIM-signed, links tracked.
• Opens/clicks appear on the send (first-party tracking, no provider toggles needed).

Next steps