Quick Answer

Use AI to generate your Dockerfile, CI config, and infrastructure-as-code. Then review each file before first deploy, add health checks, and gate production behind a canary or blue-green strategy.

AI-generated Dockerfiles often lack multi-stage builds — ask explicitly
CI pipelines work out of the box; infra IaC needs a human architect review
Never let AI deploy to production without a rollback plan

What You'll Need

Source repo in Forgejo, GitLab, or GitHub
Deployment platform (Coolify, Fly.io, Render, Railway)
AI IDE or CLI
Secret management (Vault, Doppler, or platform-native)

Steps

Generate a Dockerfile. Prompt: Write a multi-stage Dockerfile for a Next.js 15 app using Node 22 Alpine with standalone output.
Generate CI config. For Forgejo: Write a .forgejo/workflows/deploy.yml that runs tests, builds, and triggers Coolify redeploy.
Add health checks. Ask: Add a /health route and configure the Dockerfile HEALTHCHECK.
Infrastructure as code. Prompt: Write Terraform for a Hetzner VPS with Docker and Caddy reverse proxy.
Secrets. Store in platform vault. Never commit .env files.
Deploy to staging first. Every PR merge deploys to staging; promote manually to prod.
Monitor rollout. Tail logs for 10 minutes post-deploy. Set up Sentry for error tracking.
Rollback plan. Coolify: one-click rollback. Docker: docker-compose up -d --scale app=0 && deploy previous tag.

Common Mistakes

Root user in Docker. AI sometimes forgets USER node.
Unbounded layers. Skipping .dockerignore bloats images.
No liveness/readiness split. Kubernetes needs both.
Deploying on Friday afternoon. No AI fixes that.

Top Tools

Tool	Purpose
Coolify	Self-hosted PaaS
Docker Buildx	Multi-arch builds
Terraform	Cloud IaC
GitHub Copilot	Inline YAML generation
Argo Rollouts	Canary deployment

Conclusion

AI makes DevOps accessible to application developers. Generate the pipeline, review every file, deploy to staging first, always. Self-host with Coolify on Hetzner for $10-20/mo. See our Coolify setup guide.