# capistrano/capistrano

A deployment automation tool built on Ruby, Rake, and SSH.

Repository: https://github.com/capistrano/capistrano
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/capistrano
Homepage: http://www.capistranorb.com
Language: Ruby
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: deployment, ssh, ruby, capistrano
Last push: 2026-07-19T03:53:28+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 80/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 93, release rhythm 52, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 6397, "days_push": 45, "days_rel": 109, "gap_med": 277.0, "n_releases_24m": 3}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 12985, forks 1739 (observed 2026-08-28T04:11:00.308804+00:00)

## What it is
Capistrano is a remote server automation and deployment automation framework built on Ruby, Rake, and SSH. It provides a `cap` CLI tool that executes scripted deployment tasks across multiple servers in parallel, with conventions for releases, rollbacks, and multi-stage environments.

## Use cases
- deploy a rails app to production servers over ssh
- automate deployments to multiple app servers in parallel
- run arbitrary remote commands across a fleet of servers
- set up staging and production deploy stages
- roll back a bad release to the previous version
- script server maintenance tasks like uptime checks or patching
- hook custom tasks into a deployment pipeline

## When to choose
- you deploy web applications (Rails, PHP, Java, or any language) to SSH-accessible servers
- you want convention-based, repeatable multi-server deployments with rollbacks
- you prefer writing deployment steps as Rake tasks in Ruby
- you need multi-stage environments like qa, staging, and production

## When to avoid
- you deploy exclusively to containerized or serverless platforms where CI/CD pipelines or orchestrators handle deployment
- you need full infrastructure provisioning rather than application deployment (consider Ansible or Terraform)
- your team does not use Ruby and you prefer a language-agnostic tool
- you need immutable machine images rather than in-place releases

## Facets
- artifact type: framework
- maturity: stable
- function: deployment, workflow-automation, cli, developer-tools
- domain: web-development, developer-tools
- platform: ruby, cli, cross-platform
- tags: ssh, rake, deployment-automation, remote-execution, multi-server, rollbacks, rails, devops, automation, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- capistrano/capistrano (main) score 80

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:00.308804+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:13:37.833622+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/capistrano/capistrano (fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:00.308804+00:00, sha d86ccd90d9f0)
  - homepage: http://www.capistranorb.com (fetched 2026-08-29T08:09:35.697749+00:00, sha 203447d54c79)
  - site_page: https://capistranorb.com/documentation/overview/what-is-capistrano (fetched 2026-08-29T08:09:35.704397+00:00, sha 887c3d534c08)
  - site_page: https://capistranorb.com/documentation/getting-started/installation (fetched 2026-08-29T08:09:35.706524+00:00, sha eac8aaa8cf95)
  - site_page: https://capistranorb.com/documentation/getting-started/structure (fetched 2026-08-29T08:09:35.708227+00:00, sha d6e4cea2cc16)
  - site_page: https://capistranorb.com/documentation/getting-started/configuration (fetched 2026-08-29T08:09:35.710061+00:00, sha 0630a2e8e795)
  - site_page: https://capistranorb.com/documentation/getting-started/user-input (fetched 2026-08-29T08:09:35.712041+00:00, sha 9e516942177a)
  - site_page: https://capistranorb.com/documentation/getting-started/preparing-your-application (fetched 2026-08-29T08:09:35.713807+00:00, sha 2df158c94380)
  - site_page: https://capistranorb.com/documentation/getting-started/flow (fetched 2026-08-29T08:09:35.715785+00:00, sha 6e7a964e50d9)
  - site_page: https://capistranorb.com/documentation/getting-started/rollbacks (fetched 2026-08-29T08:09:35.717638+00:00, sha 0f4436f41e17)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.