Shadow Deployment

What is Shadow Deployment?

Shadow deployment runs a new model in parallel on live traffic without affecting users, comparing outputs before cutover.

What this looks like in production

In production, teams encounter Shadow Deployment when building, evaluating, or securing model and agent pipelines.

What teams usually do about it

• Document expected behavior and evaluation criteria for this concept.
• Add automated checks where the risk or metric is measurable.
• Re-test after model, data, or prompt changes.

Related Giskard articles

• Secure AI agents with continuous LLM red teaming
• Real-time guardrails vs batch LLM evaluations

Validate shadow deployments with Giskard

Compare candidate vs production with the same eval suite before promoting. Explore continuous red teaming or giskard.ai.

Further reading: Martin Fowler: Dark Launching.