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Environment Matrix

Chapter 4 of 7 · Section 30 of 44

Sections

1. Intro

  • 1. Deploy your own
  • 2. Agenda

2. Prepare Google Cloud

  • 3. Bring your own project
  • 4. Dry-run first
  • 5. Private assets and domain restricted sharing
  • 6. The one project that is public on purpose
  • 7. The Navigator deployment matrix
  • 8. The `/app` mount and HTTP route ownership
  • 9. `neon` — the whole brand seam
  • 10. Live rollout checkpoint
  • 11. Set one site to one version

3. Provision the Infrastructure

  • 12. The APIs that light up
  • 13. Network and five buckets
  • 14. How a Project portal reaches a client
  • 15. One matter's document never backs another matter's
  • 16. A private image registry
  • 17. The cluster comes up

4. Environment Matrix

  • 18. Three operating modes, two deployment profiles
  • 19. Configuration precedence: the first source wins
  • 20. Local dev controls: inputs read by `navigator dev`
  • 21. Local runtime: what `.devx/env` generates
  • 22. The store: SurrealDB
  • 23. Where SurrealDB authorization lives
  • 24. Deployed runtime: core web and worker wiring
  • 25. Deployed runtime: identity and access
  • 26. Deployed runtime: email, signatures, and billing
  • 27. Deployed runtime: repositories, content, AI, and scheduled work
  • 28. Provision and ship: variables read by the operator CLI
  • 29. Ancillary operations and opt-in test controls
  • 30. When simulated data appears

5. Configure the Trust Boundaries

  • 31. Secrets: the invariants that gate the boot
  • 32. Sign-in: bring an OIDC provider; passwords live there, not here
  • 33. Role rings: who can do what
  • 34. Provider signup and parity across the deployments
  • 35. The external surface — every third party, in one place
  • 36. The two service deployments
  • 37. Security architecture

6. Ship the Instance

  • 38. Ship and verify
  • 39. Post the verified handoff in `#navigator`
  • 40. Point your domain at the instance (optional)
  • 41. Drive it from the CLI
  • 42. Make it yours — white-label under your own brand
  • 43. This is how we set up Neon Law Foundation

7. Wrap Up

  • 44. Canonical references

When simulated data appears

SurfaceLocal devDisposable dev stagingPersistent hosted rows
Canonical database seedAlways runsAlways runsAlways runs
Disposable development portfolioAlways runs (dev)Always runs (dev)Never
Test-local database fixturesBrowser/E2E harness onlyIntegration harness onlyNever
EmailCapturingEmail by defaultNon-production SendGridProduction SendGrid
E-signatureStub IDs and documentsNon-binding DocuSign demoLive DocuSign
BillingStubBillingProvider when Xero is absentSame fallbackSame fallback today
Contract reviewStub without VertexSame fallbackReference uses Vertex
AIDA free-form routingNullRouter without VertexSame fallbackReference uses Vertex

Presenter notes

The canonical seed is not gated by environment: every web boot applies the SurrealDB schema and idempotently inserts the bundled catalog and firm-owned baseline rows in every deployment, production included. Jurisdictions are the clearest example of the distinction this table encodes. The full reference set — all 248 rows of store/seeds/Jurisdiction.yaml, every US state plus DC and every sovereign a matter can touch — is seeded on every boot in every environment, because an entity's domicile and an attorney's licensure must resolve wherever the application runs; since ENG-20 those rows live in SurrealDB, but the rule is engine-blind. The simulated cases — the Using the Navigator matters (Henderson Bungalow Purchase, the litigation demo, the training cohort) and their example Projects, invoices, mail, and answers — are the opposite: a second, idempotent layer that only a dev boot (local KIND, the disposable dev staging lane) applies and the test harnesses recreate, and that no persistent hosted row ever receives from a boot. The persistent staging deployment at www.neonlaw.com holds only simulated matters, but by data-plane policy — everything ever entered there is synthetic — not because the compiled portfolio seeds it; the firm's production holds real matters and neither simulated cases nor test fixtures, while its jurisdictions are identical to every other environment's. Both layers are applied by one environment-aware orchestration call (store::seed::seed_environment), so a reset or recreate restores the same canonical + development baseline automatically. Provider simulation is a separate axis again: the test harness permits fakes, while a non-harness dev uses sandbox integrations. Test suites add further records inside isolated test schemas.

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