Why the platform deploys in a fixed order

The platform deploys in one order: vault-deployer, devops-server-deployer, devops-server-onboarding, application-deployer, then dashboard. Each stage after the first depends on something an earlier stage produced.

Vault goes first because every other repo reads its secrets and per-host config from it. The DevOps server comes next. Its PyPI mirror, shared PostgreSQL server, and source-hosting service all run on one host, and the PostgreSQL stage also seeds Vault with the downstream database credentials.

Onboarding then provisions users and publishes artifacts to the DevOps server's registries. application-deployer installs its dependencies from the devops-server package registry, so it can't run before that. The dashboard goes last because it links to, and monitors, everything else.

See the architecture notes for the full picture.