What Is a Dark Launch?
A dark launch is the practice of deploying a feature into production while keeping it hidden from users, often behind a feature flag or by exercising it silently. The code runs in the real environment under real conditions, but its effects are not exposed. This decouples deploying code from releasing the feature.
Why it matters
Dark launching lets teams validate that new code performs and integrates correctly under production load before any user is affected. When confident, they flip a flag to release it instantly, with no redeploy and an immediate kill switch if something goes wrong.
Related concepts
- Relies on feature flags to gate visibility
- Shadow traffic is a related load-testing technique
- Part of the progressive delivery toolkit
Related guides
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