CI/CD is the software-delivery practice that pairs continuous integration, which automatically builds and tests every code change, with continuous delivery or continuous deployment, which automatically moves verified changes toward production.
The "CD" names two related practices. Continuous delivery keeps every change that passes the pipeline in a releasable state, with a human deciding when it ships to production. Continuous deployment removes that decision and releases every passing change automatically. Both rest on the first half, 📝continuous integration, in which each push or 📝pull request triggers dependency installation, tests, and checks that report a pass or fail status.
A CI/CD pipeline is usually defined as code inside the repository and executed by a hosted service such as 📝GitHub Actions, while deploy platforms such as 📝Railway pick up merged changes and release them to an environment. Required status checks become merge gates through 📝branch protection, so code cannot reach a protected branch until the pipeline passes.
CI/CD sits at the center of DevOps, where it shortens the loop between writing code and learning whether it works in a running system. The tradeoff is upfront investment in test coverage and pipeline configuration: an automated release is only as trustworthy as the checks guarding it. The video DevOps CI/CD Explained in 100 Seconds gives a compact visual overview.
Our own pipeline runs both meanings of CD at once: merges to staging deploy continuously once test and security pass, while production pauses for a human to approve the release. The full setup lives in 📝A Git Protocol for Parallel AI Coding Agents.