30 Seconds, They Said
Your AI deploy agent promised a 30-second rollback. That was 12 minutes ago.
The Scenario
An AI deploy agent detected high error rates on the payment service and initiated an automatic rollback. But the ECR authentication token expired mid-rollback, leaving pods unable to pull the target image. The agent keeps retrying with stale credentials while the deployment is stuck in a split-brain state - some pods running the old version, others in ImagePullBackOff. You need to stop the agent, diagnose the auth failure, and complete the rollback manually.
What You'll Learn
When to take manual control from an AI deploy agent
Diagnosing ECR authentication and imagePullSecret failures
Understanding mixed pod version states during failed rollbacks
Reading AI agent action logs to understand what it already tried
Managing Kubernetes deployments when automation fails mid-operation
Tools You'll Use
Real-World Context
As AI deploy agents become standard in CI/CD pipelines, a new class of incidents is emerging: the agent itself becomes the problem. This scenario is inspired by real posts from engineers fighting automated tools that promised quick fixes but created bigger messes.