Every thunk moves through three phases on its way to live work: Prototype, Testing, and Production. Each phase runs against an environment that controls which AI models and tools the thunk can use, so promoting a thunk is how you take it from quick experimentation to real production workloads without changing the thunk's logic.
This article covers how to move a thunk between phases from the Deploy pane. To set up the environments each phase runs against, see Configuring Environment Settings.
The three phases
Phase | Purpose |
Prototype | Build and explore the thunk quickly, usually against sample files and mock services. |
Testing | Validate the thunk against real-ish services before go-live. |
Production | Run live workloads against real production services. |
The phase a thunk is in determines which environment its work runs against. An IT administrator defines those environments; as an author you choose which phase the thunk is in and which of the available environments it uses.
Where to find it
Open your thunk.
In the left navigation, open Deploy.
Open the Phase tab.
The Phase tab shows the thunk's current phase and, for thunk admins, the buttons to move it forward or back. Only thunk admins can change a thunk's phase or environment.
Move a thunk forward
To promote a thunk to the next phase:
On the Phase tab, select Move to Testing (or Move to Production once the thunk is in Testing).
In the Deploy to dialog, pick the environment the thunk should run against in the new phase. The list shows only environments that your administrator has made available for that phase.
Confirm the design-review reminder (see below).
Select Select and Deploy. The thunk moves to the new phase immediately.
Design review before promotion
Before you can promote a thunk forward, Thunk.AI asks you to acknowledge that you have run a design review on the current version of the thunk. The dialog shows a warning when the most recent review has open issues, is out of date, or has not been run yet, and you must check the acknowledgment box before the Select and Deploy button becomes available.
This is a reminder, not a hard block — you can still promote after acknowledging it — but it is there so a thunk does not reach Production without someone confirming its current version has been reviewed. To run or read a review, use the Review tab of the Deploy pane. For more on reviews, see Workflow Review.
Move a thunk back
If you need to return a thunk to an earlier phase — for example, to keep iterating after finding a problem in Testing — select Go back to Prototype (or Go back to Testing), pick the environment for that phase, and confirm. Rolling back does not require the design-review acknowledgment.
Change the environment for the current phase
A phase can have more than one environment available. To switch which environment the thunk uses without changing its phase, open the Environment tab and select Change on the Resource Environment card, then pick a different environment. This is useful when your administrator offers, say, two Testing environments and you want to point the thunk at a different one. The Change option appears only when more than one environment is available for the current phase.