DigitalOcean Provider

Deploy preview environments to DigitalOcean Droplets via SSH.

How it works

Build: SSHs into a fresh Droplet, clones the repo, and runs docker build. Docker is installed automatically via cloud-init on first boot.
Deploy: runs the built Docker image in a container on the same Droplet. Each PR gets its own Droplet.
Delete: destroys the Droplet.
List: lists all Droplets tagged preview-repo-{owner}-{repo}.

Prerequisites

A DigitalOcean account.
A personal access token with read/write scope.
An SSH key registered in DigitalOcean (used for Droplet access).

Step 1 — Create a DigitalOcean personal access token

Go to API → Tokens → Generate New Token.
Enable both Read and Write scopes.
Store the token as DIGITALOCEAN_TOKEN in Previewops secrets.

Step 2 — Register an SSH key in DigitalOcean

If you already have an SSH key pair:

Go to Settings → Security → SSH Keys → Add SSH Key.
Paste the public key.
Note the Key ID (numeric) or fingerprint shown after adding it (or find either with doctl compute ssh-key list).

If you need a new key pair:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "previewops" -f ~/.ssh/previewops
# Upload ~/.ssh/previewops.pub to DigitalOcean (step above)
# Store the private key content as DO_SSH_PRIVATE_KEY in previewops secrets
cat ~/.ssh/previewops

Step 3 — Store secrets in Previewops

Secret	Value
`DIGITALOCEAN_TOKEN`	Personal access token from step 1
`DO_SSH_PRIVATE_KEY`	PEM-encoded private key from step 2

Step 4 — Configure the repo

provider: digitalocean
providerConfig:
  sshKeyId: "12345678"   # required — numeric Key ID or fingerprint from step 2
  region: nyc3           # optional (default: nyc3)
                         # see: doctl compute region list
  size: s-1vcpu-1gb      # optional (default: s-1vcpu-1gb)
                         # see: doctl compute size list

Step 5 — Verify

Comment /validate-previewops on any open PR. The bot will call GET /v2/account and report the account email and status.

Notes

Droplets are provisioned on-demand for each PR and destroyed on delete/close.
First deploy takes ~3 minutes (Droplet boot + Docker/git installation via cloud-init).
Subsequent deploys to the same PR reuse the existing Droplet and are faster (~30s).
The preview URL is http://{droplet-ip}. For HTTPS, place a load balancer or Caddy reverse proxy in front.

Troubleshooting

Error	Fix
`DIGITALOCEAN_TOKEN environment variable is required`	Set the token in secrets
`digitalocean providerConfig.sshKeyId is required`	Add `sshKeyId` to `providerConfig`
SSH connection refused	Droplet hasn't finished cloud-init; the provider waits 3 min automatically
`docker: command not found`	cloud-init failed — check Droplet console logs in the DO dashboard