Buyer template · Rollout checklist · Updated 2026-09-14
Coding Assistant Rollout Checklist
A rollout checklist for adding an AI coding assistant without weakening code review, secrets handling, or licensing discipline.
When to use it: Use this before enabling an AI coding assistant repo-wide or letting it operate with elevated permissions.
Scope and access
- Decide which repositories the assistant can access first; start narrow.
- Confirm the assistant cannot access secrets, credentials, or production data by default.
- Decide where agent tool execution may run (vendor-hosted, self-hosted, or both); for self-hosted workers, name who owns the worker environment, network access, secrets exposure, patching, and shutdown.
- Separate autonomous action scope into draft/open-PR, repository-write, merge, and deploy permissions; name the approval gate for each tier instead of granting one generic agentic-action level.
Review and ownership
- Decide whether AI-generated review approvals may satisfy required approval rules; where policy requires human signoff, keep at least one named human approval requirement that automation cannot satisfy.
- Keep branch protection, rulesets, and required status checks enforced independently of the assistant; do not let an AI approval or elevated agent identity bypass the merge conditions you expect human-authored changes to satisfy.
- Before enabling repository-write, merge, or deploy tiers, require a retrievable activity trail that identifies the acting agent or service identity, the changed target, and the accountable human owner.
- Use a dedicated non-personal automation or service identity for repository-write, merge, or deploy tiers; record its accountable human owner and revocation path instead of reusing a person's standing credential.
- Store elevated automation or service-identity credentials only in an approved secret manager or equivalent protected credential store; never commit them to the repository, plaintext configuration, build logs, or shared developer environment files.
- Treat an accountable-owner change, team transfer, or offboarding as a fresh elevated-access decision: revoke or rotate the automation credential and require a new named owner before repository-write, merge, or deploy access continues.
- After the transfer completes, record the repository, the prior credential revocation or rotation result, the new accountable owner, the resulting approved action tier, when the new ownership boundary took effect, and any failed clients or workflows still needing follow-up; naming a new owner is not proof the old access path was closed.
- Rotate elevated automation or service-identity credentials on a defined cadence and immediately after suspected exposure; record the rotation owner and do not leave an expired credential available as a fallback path.
- After each rotation, record when it completed, which credential was replaced, evidence that the prior credential can no longer authenticate, the owner of the active replacement, and any failed clients or workflows that still need follow-up; a scheduled rotation is not completion evidence.
- Recheck elevated action scope on a defined cadence: confirm the assistant's actual repository-write, merge, and deploy permissions still match the approved tier, then record the review outcome, resulting approved action tier, any scope change, and who approved it before broader privileges continue.
- Expire elevated repository-write, merge, or deploy access after a defined inactivity window; require explicit reapproval before restoring dormant access instead of leaving standing privilege in place. When dormant access is restored, record the repository, restored action tier, why access is needed again, who approved reactivation, and when access resumed so the resulting privilege boundary is explicit.
- Time-box any emergency or break-glass elevation for repository-write, merge, or deploy access; record the owner and reason, let the elevated grant expire automatically, and require the normal approval path before continuing that privilege.
- Limit emergency or break-glass elevation to the exact repository and action tier needed for the incident; do not turn a temporary exception into blanket repository-write, merge, or deploy access.
- Revoke emergency or break-glass elevation as soon as the incident no longer needs it, even if the automatic expiry has not fired yet; verify the temporary credential, token, or policy grant can no longer exercise the elevated action tier.
- After any emergency or break-glass elevation ends, record the repository and action tier that were temporarily authorized, when elevated access was revoked, the evidence that revocation was verified, whether the normal approved action tier changed, and who closed the exception; automatic expiry alone is not the closure record.
- Make it clear a human reviewer is still accountable for merged code, not the assistant.
- Track whether AI-assisted PRs need an additional review step.
Licensing and IP
- Confirm the vendor's policy on training data, code retention, and suggested-code licensing.
- Check whether any output attribution or license-compatibility review is needed for your codebase.
Rollout
- Pilot with one team and one repository before expanding.
- Measure review turnaround and defect rate, not just adoption.
- Define the conditions that pause rollout, such as a secrets exposure, an unauthorized action, a review-control bypass, or a defect spike; name who can stop expansion.
- Define the rollback path before expanding: revoke elevated permissions, disable agentic actions, and return to the last approved human-reviewed workflow until the issue is resolved.
- After a rollback, record the repository, the action tier that was removed or reduced, the last approved workflow restored, when rollback completed, the evidence that the elevated action path no longer works, and the owner who verified the restored boundary; declaring rollback is not completion evidence.
- Document approved use cases and any explicitly disallowed ones, such as pasting customer data into prompts.
Related workflows
- AI Tools for Engineering Managers
A starter AI stack for engineering managers balancing planning, code context, research, and team communication.
- AI Tools for Code Review Summaries
A code-review summary stack for engineering teams that want clearer pull request context without weakening review standards.
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Not sure which stack fits first?
Take the stack quiz for a recommended starting point.
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