LangChain Production Checklist

Contents

• Overview

• Prerequisites

• Instructions

• Output

• Error Handling

• Examples

• Resources

Overview

Comprehensive checklist for deploying LangChain applications to production with reliability, security, and performance.

Prerequisites

• LangChain application developed and tested

• Infrastructure provisioned

• CI/CD pipeline configured

Instructions

1. Configuration & Secrets

• All API keys in secrets manager (not env vars in code)

• Environment-specific configurations separated

• Configuration validation on startup with pydantic_settings.BaseSettings

2. Error Handling & Resilience

• Retry logic with exponential backoff

• Fallback models: primary.with_fallbacks([fallback])

• Circuit breaker for cascading failures

3. Observability

• Structured logging, Prometheus metrics, LangSmith tracing

• Alerting rules for error rate and latency

4. Performance

• Redis caching for repeated queries

• Connection pooling, timeout limits, batch processing

5. Security

• Input validation (length limits, sanitization)

• Rate limiting per user/IP, audit logging

6. Testing

• Unit tests for all chains, integration tests with mock LLMs

• Load tests and chaos engineering

7. Deployment

• Health check endpoint, graceful shutdown, rolling deployment

• Rollback procedure documented

8. Cost Management

• Token counting, usage alerts, budget limits

See detailed implementation for code examples and deployment validation script.

Output

• Validated production configuration

• Health check endpoint

• Pre-deployment validation script

• Cost estimation utilities

Error Handling

Issue Cause Solution

API key missing Bad secrets config Validate on startup

LLM timeout Network/provider issue Set timeout + fallback

Cache miss storm Redis down Graceful degradation

Examples

Basic usage: Apply langchain prod checklist to a standard project setup with default configuration options.

Advanced scenario: Customize langchain prod checklist for production environments with multiple constraints and team-specific requirements.

Resources

• LangChain Production Guide

• LangSmith

• Twelve-Factor App

Next Steps

After launch, use langchain-observability for monitoring.