# shipitjs/shipit

Universal automation and deployment tool ⛵️

Repository: https://github.com/shipitjs/shipit
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/shipit
Homepage: https://www.smooth-code.com
Language: JavaScript
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: shipit, javascript, capistrano, deployment, deploy
Archived: true
Last push: 2022-09-26T23:51:59+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 10/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4248, "days_push": 1437, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: archived
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 5294, forks 193 (observed 2026-08-28T04:09:15.173949+00:00)

## What it is
Shipit is a universal automation engine and deployment tool for the Node.js ecosystem, positioned as a JavaScript-based alternative to Capistrano. Tasks are written in a shipitfile.js and executed via the shipit CLI to deploy code and run commands on remote servers over SSH, with support for rollbacks and event-driven task flows.

## Use cases
- deploy my application to remote servers over ssh from the command line
- capistrano-style deployment tool for javascript projects
- rollback a bad deployment to the previous release
- automate simple tasks on remote servers with javascript
- copy config files to a remote server as part of a deploy
- write custom deployment pipeline tasks with events in node

## When to choose
- You deploy to traditional remote servers via SSH and want release/rollback semantics like Capistrano
- You prefer defining deployment and automation tasks in JavaScript rather than YAML or Ruby
- You need an extensible task engine with orchestrator-style flows, events, and interactive SSH sessions

## When to avoid
- Your deployments target containers or Kubernetes, where CI/CD pipelines or k8s-native tooling fit better
- You need a tool with active ongoing development - releases have stalled since 2022
- You only need a one-off file sync where plain rsync or a CI upload step is simpler

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: maintenance
- function: deployment, workflow-automation, ssh, cli, developer-tools
- domain: developer-tools
- platform: cli, cross-platform
- tags: capistrano-alternative, task-runner, remote-deployment, ssh-deploy, rollback, shipitfile, javascript-tasks, devops, automation, command-line, nodejs

## Member repositories
- shipitjs/shipit (main) score 10

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:15.173949+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 2026-08-29T17:59:11.720242+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/shipitjs/shipit (fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:15.173949+00:00, sha 24808a1c34a4)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.