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Episode 23 of 24Go live60 min

Run the go-live checklist and open for real orders

Switch to live payment keys, make one real small purchase and refund it, test email delivery, take a backup, set up monitoring and alerts, and tick off a launch-day table.

You will have: A store that has taken and refunded one real test order, sends mail that reaches inboxes, is backed up and monitored, and has a signed-off launch checklist.

Before you start

  • Episodes 20, 21 and 22 are done, and the policies have been reviewed for your country
  • Your payment gateway account is fully activated for live payments (business details and bank account accepted)
  • A real card you own, and a product or temporary test product with a low price
  • Two or three email addresses on different providers (for example Gmail and Outlook) to test delivery

Make it yours

Change the example (fashion store) to your own. Your answers are saved in this browser and used in every episode.

Other series keywords (3)

Your prompt

Paste into: Your AI agent (Claude Code or Codex) opened in your project folder. You do the dashboard steps yourself, and the agent checks the results.
You are my launch manager. My store "Thread & Needle" is a fashion e-commerce store at threadandneedle.com that sells women's and men's clothing, shoes and accessories to customers in United States, in USD. Payments use Stripe. It runs on Vercel with Neon Postgres, Cloudinary and Resend. I am not a programmer, so explain every step briefly and wait for me.

Plan first: show me your plan and wait for my OK before changing anything. Go one stage at a time and do not move on until I confirm.

Stages:
1. Live keys. Explain the difference between test mode and live mode in Stripe. Tell me which environment variables in the host settings must change for Production only (keys and the webhook signing secret), and remind me to keep Preview on test keys. I paste the values in the host settings myself; never ask me to share them with you. Then trigger a redeploy and confirm the site reports live mode without showing any key.
2. Real test purchase. Guide me to buy the cheapest product on the live site with my own real card, as a normal customer: guest checkout, then a second purchase with an account if I want. After each purchase check, using read-only queries, that the order is marked paid exactly once, stock went down, the confirmation email arrived, and the admin panel shows the order.
3. Refund. Guide me to refund that order from the payment gateway dashboard. Check that the order status updates in the store (build the refund webhook handling if it is missing, on a branch, with a test) and the customer gets the right email or a clear note in the admin panel. Restore the stock if my policy says so.
4. Email deliverability. Send the order email to my test addresses. Help me check: it lands in the inbox and not spam, the sender is my domain, SPF and DKIM pass (show me how to view the original message headers), the reply-to address is real, and links point to threadandneedle.com.
5. Backup. Take a fresh production backup using the direct connection and the guarded script from Episode 20, store it outside the repository, and prove it restores into a scratch database. Delete the scratch database.
6. Monitoring and alerts. Add a small health endpoint that checks the database and returns only ok or fail with no details. Help me set up a free uptime monitor on it (verify the free plan on the provider's pricing page), turn on error alerts from the host or a free error tracker, and add a payment failure alert in the gateway dashboard. Send me a test alert so I see it arrive.
7. Launch table. Produce a final checklist as a table with columns: Item, Owner (me or agent), Status, Evidence. Include: live keys, webhook live and verified, real purchase, refund, emails, backup, monitoring, alerts, policies reviewed, admin account secured with a strong password, test products removed or hidden, Preview using test data, and a rollback tested.

Security rules: never print, log or commit a secret or a full card number. Never use real customer data in tests. Do not disable security checks to get something to pass. If a step fails, stop, explain, and suggest the safest fix.

Verify yourself where you can, and show results with secrets masked.

Commit any code changes on a branch with a clear message and open a pull request. Do not merge until I say so.

Report back in this format:
- What was done
- What I should check
- Anything that needs my decision (including whether we are ready to launch)

Review the prompt, then copy it. Never paste real passwords or API keys into a chat.

How to check it worked

  • The host shows live keys only in Production, and a Preview deployment still uses test mode
  • Your real purchase appears in the admin panel as paid once, and the confirmation email arrived in your inbox
  • After the refund, the order status changes in the admin panel and your card statement or gateway dashboard shows the refund
  • Email headers show SPF and DKIM as pass, and the message was not in spam in each test inbox
  • An uptime alert and an error alert both reached you as tests
  • The final launch table has no row left on Not done

Sample result

Example: fashion store

Example launch table for the fashion store. Your evidence column will show your own results.

If something goes wrong

The live payment fails or says the key is invalid.
Check that the live secret key and the live publishable key come from the same account and that the account is fully activated. Make sure you changed the variable in Production, then redeployed.
The order stays unpaid after a successful live payment.
Open the live webhook endpoint in the gateway dashboard and read the delivery log. Wrong address or a test signing secret still in Production are the usual causes. Fix the variable, redeploy, then resend the event from the dashboard.
Order emails land in spam.
Confirm the domain shows verified in Resend, send from an address on that domain, make sure the subject and text read like a normal receipt, and avoid sending a large batch from a new domain on day one. Ask the agent to review the template for spam-like wording.
The uptime monitor reports downtime during idle periods.
A cold start or a paused free database can make the first check slow. Ask the agent to make the health endpoint light, then set a longer timeout in the monitor.

The gateway charges fees on live payments, and a refund may not return the original fee: check this on the gateway's pricing page. Uptime and error tracking tools have free plans with changing limits, so verify them on each provider's pricing page.

More in Go live

This is part of the series Build a secure, no-cost e-commerce website with AI agents. See all 24 episodes, the tools used and answers to common questions on the series page.

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