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Production, Staging, and Dev: Environment Types Explained

Published · Last updated: June 2026 · 3 min read

The Three Environment Types

Every site you create in CloudAIPilot is assigned one of three environment types. You select the environment when creating the site — it cannot be changed afterwards. The three options are:

  • production — your live site serving real users
  • staging — a pre-release testing environment
  • dev — a development environment for active work and experimentation

The environment type is a label you apply to help you and your team distinguish how each site should be treated. CloudAIPilot uses this label to enforce certain platform behaviors, particularly around AI actions and destructive operations.

What Each Environment Means

production

Use this for your live, public-facing sites. Any site marked as production will have Production Protection enabled by default. This setting (found in Settings → AI Agent → Agent Controls) prevents the AI Pilot from taking write actions on production servers without explicit approval. Destructive operations on production sites — like deleting a site or changing critical configuration — also require a typed confirmation before proceeding.

staging

Use this for a testing environment where you validate changes before deploying to production. A staging site is hosted on a real cloud server just like production, but it is not subject to production protection by default. This gives you more freedom to test and experiment without the extra safety gates.

dev

Use this for active development environments. Dev sites are intended for work-in-progress features that are not yet ready for staging or production. Like staging, dev sites are not subject to production protection constraints by default.

Note: There is no "localhost" option in CloudAIPilot. CloudAIPilot manages cloud-hosted servers only. Your local development machine is outside the scope of CloudAIPilot; the dev environment type is for cloud-hosted development servers, not local machines.

How to Set the Environment

The environment type is chosen in the Create Site dialog:

  1. Navigate to the server where you want to create the site.
  2. Open the Sites & Apps tab and click + Create Site.
  3. In the site creation form, locate the Environment field and select production, staging, or dev.
  4. Complete the rest of the form and create the site.

Once the site is created, the environment type is fixed. If you need a site in a different environment, create a new site.

Production Protection

When Production Protection is enabled in your AI Agent settings, the AI Pilot will not execute write actions on servers hosting production sites. This is a safety measure to prevent accidental changes to live infrastructure.

To review or change this setting: go to Settings → AI Agent → Agent Controls and look for the Production Protection toggle. It is enabled by default.

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