> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.chainloop.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Environments and Logical Environments

> Define infrastructure targets and lifecycle stages for deployment tracking in Chainloop.

<Warning>
  This is a preview/beta feature. Further changes are expected.
</Warning>

Environments and Logical Environments are the building blocks for [Artifact Deployment Tracking](/concepts/deployments) in Chainloop. Together, they describe **where** your artifacts run (the infrastructure target) and **at what stage** of the lifecycle they are (development, staging, production, etc.).

## Environments

An Environment represents a concrete infrastructure target where your software runs. This could be a Kubernetes cluster, an AWS ECS service, a bare-metal server, a serverless function, or any other deployment destination.

### Managing Environments

Environments are managed via the `chainloop environment` command group. For example:

```bash theme={"dark"}
chainloop environment create --name my-k8s-cluster --description "Production Kubernetes cluster in us-east-1"
```

See the [CLI Reference](/command-line-reference/cli-ee-reference) for all available commands (create, list, describe, update, delete).

## Logical Environments

A Logical Environment represents a lifecycle stage in your delivery pipeline. While Environments define the physical or virtual infrastructure, Logical Environments define the purpose or phase of a deployment, such as development, staging, or production.

When you create an organization, Chainloop automatically provides three default logical environments:

| Logical Environment | Description                 |
| ------------------- | --------------------------- |
| `development`       | For development and testing |
| `staging`           | Pre-production validation   |
| `production`        | Live production workloads   |

You can also create custom logical environments to match your organization's delivery process (e.g., `qa`, `performance-testing`, `canary`).

<Note>
  In an upcoming release, Logical Environments will also enable running [Policies](/concepts/policies) scoped to specific lifecycle stages — for example, enforcing stricter compliance checks for artifacts deployed to `production` than to `development`.
</Note>

### Managing Logical Environments

Logical environments are managed via the `chainloop logical-environment` command group. For example:

```bash theme={"dark"}
chainloop logical-environment create --name canary --description "Canary release stage"
```

See the [CLI Reference](/command-line-reference/cli-ee-reference) for all available commands.

## Next Steps

* [Artifact Deployment Tracking](/concepts/deployments) — Record and query what's running where
* [Projects and Versions](/concepts/projects-versions) — Organize your software components