17 Production Checks Every NestJS Developer Should Run Before Deploying

A detailed technical guide outlines 17 critical checks NestJS developers must complete before moving applications to production environments. The guide highlights key differences between local and production setups, including multi-replica deployments, load balancers, and shared databases that expose gaps in default configurations. Among the top recommendations are validating environment variables at startup using schema tools like Zod, storing secrets in platform-native secret stores rather than image layers, and enabling graceful shutdown hooks to prevent dropped requests or interrupted jobs. The guide also warns against logging full config objects at startup, a common debugging habit that can inadvertently expose credentials to log pipelines. Additional focus is placed on proper signal handling in containers, advising developers to use exec-form Docker commands and init processes to ensure Node.js receives and acts on termination signals correctly.