vela-mail-smoke

A throwaway Cloudflare Worker that exercises every @velapay/mail template against the real Cloudflare Email Service before a release ships. Originally created during Phase 49 (D-14 verification window) and intentionally short-lived — deploy, smoke-test every template, delete.

Purpose and Role

• Verify that every vela-mail template still renders and dispatches against the production transport.
• Catch breakage that local Mailpit testing can't surface (CF Email rejection, allowed-sender mismatches, binding misconfiguration, content-type issues).
• Run end-to-end without dragging in the dashboard's full Worker — just vela-mail + a thin HTTP shim that selects a template by name.
• Be deletable on demand once a release passes.

Tech Stack

Technology	Version	Purpose
TypeScript	^5.8.x	Language
Bun	1.3.x	Package manager / dev runtime
@vela/mail	local link	Template + transport
Cloudflare Workers	—	Hosting (real send_email bindings)
wrangler	latest	Deploy + delete

Worker Surface

GET /send?to=<email>&type=<template-id>

Selects a vela-mail template by name and dispatches it to the requested recipient using the production send_email binding. Allowed-sender bindings configured in wrangler.toml:

Binding	Allowed sender
AUTH_EMAIL	mail@velapay.io
BILLING_EMAIL	billing@velapay.io

Directory Structure

vela-mail-smoke/
├── src/
│   └── index.ts              # GET /send dispatch shim
├── wrangler.toml             # CF Email bindings + sender allowlist
├── package.json
└── tsconfig.json

Operational Workflow

1. bun install
2. wrangler deploy                       # ships throwaway worker
3. bun run send:auth                     # smoke-tests auth.verification template
4. bun run send:invoice                  # smoke-tests invoice template
   (repeat for each new or changed template)
5. visually confirm receipt at $SMOKE_TO
6. wrangler delete --name vela-mail-smoke   # tear down post-verification

The npm scripts wrap the curl calls so the smoke flow is a single bun command per template.

Notable Design Decisions

Throwaway by Design

This is not a continuously-deployed surface. The wrangler.toml opening comment is explicit: "THROWAWAY Worker — Phase 49 smoke verification (D-14). DELETE post-verification." Keeping it deployed long-term would (a) accumulate sender quota, (b) create a long-lived ingress on the Cloudflare account, and (c) drift from the actual vela-mail consumer surfaces. Each release that touches templates redeploys it.

Real Transport, Real Senders

Mailpit is fine for local-dev visual review but doesn't catch CF Email rejection or allowlist misconfiguration. This worker uses production senders (mail@velapay.io, billing@velapay.io) so issues that only manifest with real DKIM/SPF/DMARC paths surface here.

One-Recipient Test

The smoke flow targets a single human recipient (SMOKE_TO). Bulk testing isn't the goal — visual confirmation that the rendered email looks right and lands in the inbox is.

Related

• Templates and transport: vela-mail →
• Release verification matrix: Verification Matrix →