Overview

Rails Pulse can record when you deploy. Each deployment is a revision (usually a git SHA), a start time, an optional finish time, and optional metadata. Deployments:

• Appear as vertical markers on the dashboard, route, query, and job charts, so a regression can be lined up against the release that caused it
• Are listed on the Deployments page with their status, duration, and metadata
• Stamp each captured exception with the revision that was live when it fired

There are two ways to record one: an HTTP endpoint for CI/CD pipelines, and rake tasks for shell-based deploys that have database access but no token or network route to the dashboard.

HTTP API

The endpoint lives under the engine mount, so with the default mount it is POST /rails_pulse/deployments. It authenticates with a token header, separately from the dashboard’s own authentication, and fails closed: with no token configured, every API request is rejected.

# config/initializers/rails_pulse.rb
RailsPulse.configure do |config|
  config.deployment_api_token = ENV["RAILS_PULSE_DEPLOYMENT_TOKEN"]
  # or: Rails.application.credentials.dig(:rails_pulse, :deployment_api_token)
end

Record a deployment when a release starts:

curl -X POST https://yourapp.com/rails_pulse/deployments \
  -H "X-Rails-Pulse-Token: $RAILS_PULSE_DEPLOYMENT_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"deployment": {"revision": "abc1234", "metadata": {"environment": "production"}}}'

Mark it finished when the release completes:

curl -X PUT https://yourapp.com/rails_pulse/deployments/finish \
  -H "X-Rails-Pulse-Token: $RAILS_PULSE_DEPLOYMENT_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"deployment": {"revision": "abc1234"}}'

Both accept an optional started_at / finished_at timestamp. started_at may be at most one hour in the future.

GitHub Actions example

- name: Record deployment in Rails Pulse
  run: |
    curl -fsS -X POST "$APP_URL/rails_pulse/deployments" \
      -H "X-Rails-Pulse-Token: ${{ secrets.RAILS_PULSE_DEPLOYMENT_TOKEN }}" \
      -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
      -d "{\"deployment\": {\"revision\": \"${{ github.sha }}\", \"metadata\": {\"actor\": \"${{ github.actor }}\"}}}"

Rake tasks

For Kamal hooks, Capistrano tasks, or any deploy script that can run rails against the production database:

rake rails_pulse:record_deployment[abc1234]
# ... deploy ...
rake rails_pulse:finish_deployment[abc1234]

Rake splits task arguments on commas, so metadata is passed as a JSON object in an environment variable instead:

RAILS_PULSE_DEPLOYMENT_METADATA='{"environment":"production","actor":"ci"}' \
  rake rails_pulse:record_deployment[abc1234]

finish_deployment sets finished_at on the latest deployment recorded for that revision and prints the duration.

Limits and retention

Deployments are never pruned by age. They are capped by count instead, so old markers stay on long-range charts until the cap is reached:

config.max_table_records = {
  rails_pulse_deployments: 1_000  # default; oldest pruned first
}

Standalone and separate dashboards

The API endpoint is served by whichever process mounts the dashboard. If your main app runs with mount_dashboard = false, point CI at the dashboard host instead, or use the rake tasks from the main app, which only need database access. See Deployment Modes.

Next Steps

• Exception Tracking — occurrences record the revision that was live
• Advanced Configuration — how regressions are detected and compared against a route’s own history