---
title: "Auto-Update Readiness"
description: "Review pending container updates across your fleet, with risk tags, changelogs, and rollback targets, before applying."
---

<Note>
  Auto-Update Readiness requires a **Skipper** or **Admiral** license.
</Note>

## Overview

Auto-Update Readiness is the launchpad for every pending update across your stacks. Instead of a list of CRUD policies, the view surfaces one card per stack with an available update and tells you, at a glance, whether it is safe to apply.

Each card shows:

- The current and next tag, with the new version highlighted in cyan.
- A **risk tag** derived from the version delta: `patch` (safe), `minor`, `major`, or `digest rebuild`.
- A one-line changelog preview when the registry publishes one.
- The **rollback target** (the tag Sencho will fall back to if an update is reverted).
- The next scheduled run for the matching auto-update task, if one exists.

<Frame>
  <img src="/images/auto-update/readiness-board.png" alt="Readiness board with hero count, per-stack cards, and risk tags" />
</Frame>

The hero at the top counts pending updates fleet-wide and tells you how many of them are ready to apply without human review. Major version jumps and stacks with blocked registries are counted separately so they can be reviewed before the scheduler runs.

## Workflow

1. Open the **Auto-Update** view from the sidebar.
2. Skim the card grid. Patch and minor bumps render with a green or amber tag; major bumps render in red and are marked as blocked.
3. For a safe update, click **Apply now** on the card to pull and recreate the stack immediately.
4. For a major bump, review the changelog preview and the rollback target before deciding. If you still want to apply it, switch to the **Schedules** view and create or edit an auto-update task for that stack.
5. Use **Recheck all** in the hero to force an immediate registry poll if you want to bypass the cached update status.

## Risk tags

| Tag | Meaning | Source |
|-----|---------|--------|
| **patch** | Safe automated update (e.g. `1.2.3` → `1.2.4`) | Semver comparison of tags |
| **minor** | Backwards-compatible update (e.g. `1.2.3` → `1.3.0`) | Semver comparison of tags |
| **major** | Potentially breaking change (e.g. `1.2.3` → `2.0.0`). Marked **blocked** by default | Semver comparison of tags |
| **digest rebuild** | Same tag, new image digest (e.g. `latest` pushed again) | Local vs remote digest diff |
| **unknown** | Non-semver tag (e.g. `main`, `stable`) | Fallback when tags cannot be compared |

Blocked updates still schedule check runs, but the apply button is disabled until you review them manually.

## Scheduling auto-updates

Auto-update is a first-class action in the Schedules view. To create a recurring check for a stack:

1. Open **Schedules** in the top nav.
2. Click **New Schedule**.
3. Set **Action** to **Auto-update Stack**, choose the target node and stack, pick a cron expression, and save.

The task lives alongside restart, prune, snapshot, and scan tasks in the same timeline and table. Run history, notifications, and the Run Now button behave the same as for every other scheduled action. See [Scheduled Operations](/features/scheduled-operations) for details.

## Multi-node support

The readiness board scopes to the active node selected in the sidebar, matching the scope of the auto-update schedule attached to each card. When a remote node is selected, Sencho proxies the registry checks and the apply call to the remote Sencho instance via the Distributed API. No additional configuration is needed.

## How readiness is computed

For each stack with a pending image update, Sencho computes a preview by:

1. Parsing the compose file to enumerate every pullable image reference.
2. Calling the registry with your configured credentials to fetch the current tag list and remote digest.
3. Picking the highest semver tag greater than the current tag (keeping the same prefix and suffix) or, if tags match but digests differ, treating it as a digest rebuild.
4. Scoring the overall stack by the most severe image bump. Any major bump marks the stack as blocked.
5. Deriving the rollback target from the running tag and normalizing Docker Hub library paths.

The preview is recomputed each time the readiness board loads, so it reflects the live state of your registries and local images.

## Troubleshooting

### Card shows "No changelog available"

Sencho reads changelog metadata from the registry's manifest and OCI annotations. Registries that do not publish this metadata (most private registries and many self-hosted ones) will simply render the card without a changelog. The risk tag is still accurate because it is computed from the tag itself.

### Apply button is disabled with a "blocked" tooltip

The stack has a major version bump. Open the cron schedule for that stack and apply manually after reviewing the upstream release notes. The block is a policy decision: major updates never auto-apply without human review.

### Card stays stuck on "Checking"

The registry call is either still pending or failed. Click **Recheck all** in the hero to retry. If the stack has private-registry credentials, confirm they are still valid in **Settings > Registries**.

### "Nothing to update" but I see an update on another view

Image update detection runs every six hours. The readiness board uses the same cached status. Trigger **Recheck all** to force a fresh check, or see [Image update detection](/features/image-update-detection) for details on the refresh cycle.
