Development and Production
Why every site starts in Development, what a release is, who can approve it, and what Production serves.
Each site has two environments with separate content, tokens and settings.
| Development | Production | |
|---|---|---|
| Editing | Yes | Read-only in Studio |
| What the website reads | The latest published revisions | Only the live release, a signed, frozen snapshot |
| Delivery token | Development token | Separate Production token |
| Preview | Yes | No |
| Forms, chatbot, page-view counts | Yes | Yes, the versions in the live release |
| AI agents (MCP) | Draft and propose only | Never |
| Search engines | Always noindex |
Normal |
| Leads | Leads → Development | Leads → Live website |
Switching environment
Section titled “Switching environment”Switching between Development and Production in Studio only changes what you are looking at. It never copies, moves or changes content.
From Development to Production
Section titled “From Development to Production”- Build a release from what is published in Development.
- Atlas checks the gates:
- the website’s deployed build is in sync with the active contract;
- there are no publish problems;
- the website health check passes;
- a backup was taken in the last 24 hours.
- A person approves it. Approval needs the release-approval permission and can require a second confirmation on the approver’s phone. AI agents can never approve.
- Production switches to the new release. The previous release stays available for rollback.
Turning Production on
Section titled “Turning Production on”Production is off for every new site. A site admin can switch it on only when:
- a release has passed all gates and been approved;
- the Production domain has been verified with a DNS record;
- the admin confirms the change.
Who can do what
Section titled “Who can do what”| Role | Edit drafts | Publish in Development | Approve and roll back Production releases | Switch Production on or off |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organization admin | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Site admin | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Reviewer / publisher | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Designer / editor | Yes | No (submits for review) | No | No |
| SEO / marketing | SEO fields | No (submits for review) | No | No |
| Sales / support | No | No | No | No |
Sales and support people see the leads assigned to them. Your organization admin decides who has which role.