[Task]: Deploy a demo environment with continuous delivery #77

Motivation

MiniMap needs a hosted demo for the September 16 meeting. CI, Docker, and Just workflows are already in place. What remains is a low-cost staging/demo deployment that releases only verified changes from main.

Proposed change

Choose a provider, such as Railway or Render, based on current pricing, cold starts, logs, Docker support, and account constraints. Deploy the existing Flask container or use an explicit Gunicorn command. Configure the environment explicitly, expose HTTPS and a health check, and deploy from main only after CI passes. Document rollback/redeploy steps and billing ownership, add a smoke check for the homepage and a representative route, then record the verified URL in README/repository metadata.

Affected modules or data

• Hosting provider configuration and/or GitHub deployment workflow
• Docker/runtime configuration, health endpoint if needed, documentation, repository metadata
• No managed database required for read-only JSON graph data

Acceptance criteria

• A public HTTPS URL serves the application with the intended production command.
• Deployment occurs from main only after required CI succeeds.
• A health check succeeds and a representative route works in the deployed app.
• Maintainers can access useful logs.
• Rollback/redeploy steps are documented and tested once.
• Billing owner and maximum acceptable cost are recorded.
• The verified URL is added to README and repository metadata.

Testing requirements

Run a post-deployment smoke check against the public URL. If the selected free tier sleeps, test manually near the meeting. Verify deployment status and logs through the provider/GitHub.

Dependencies and risks

Start early, once the Docker/runtime command is stable and CI is green. This is a demo/staging deployment, not a production AWS architecture. Exclude managed databases, replicas, autoscaling, and 24/7 guarantees. Provider choice, platform-native versus GitHub Actions CD, and recurring cost are still decisions.