Correct dhq launch plan-limit guidance: free plans no longer support a site, and both links were dead

[thdurante]

Why

dhq launch's plan_limit_reached guidance was wrong in two ways, and the change that makes the first one wrong is shipping now.

Part of a three-repo series closing off abuse of the free-while-beta metered resources:

• billy#287 — card verification signals
• deployhq#1150 — the server-side admission gate and support articles
• deployhq-cli#43 (this PR) — corrects the CLI copy

Deploy DeployHQ before tagging a CLI release that describes this behaviour. Nothing here depends on it at runtime — the message is static text — so merge order is not load-bearing.

What was wrong

1. "Free plans support 1 site." is no longer true. Free-plan accounts cannot provision Managed VPS or Static Hosting at all. Both now require a paid plan and a payment method the admission gate accepts.

2. The links were dead. It pointed at https://app.deployhq.com/account/plan and .../account/billing. Neither is a route. DeployHQ scopes account pages to the account's own subdomain — config/routes.rb wraps them in constraints subdomain: — and the real paths are /account/packages and /account/payment_details. A blocked user following the old message got a 404 and still did not learn what to fix.

What changed

launchCheckPlanLimits now takes the account subdomain — already in scope at the callsite, from the same credentials that built the client — and builds both URLs from it.

Both branches name both requirements, because AccountCapabilities carries only a boolean per resource and no reason code. The CLI genuinely cannot tell whether the plan or the payment method is the problem, so it must not guess.

The same stale claim was embedded in skills/deployhq/references/launch.md, which is go:embed-ed into the binary and shipped to every agent that installs the skill. Corrected there too.

Files

File	What
internal/commands/launch.go	subdomain-aware next-step, both requirements named; subdomain now taken from the SDK client
internal/commands/launch_test.go	asserts the URLs; pins both regressions
skills/deployhq/references/launch.md	same correction in the embedded skill
CHANGELOG.md	## [Unreleased] entry

The series, and the order it ships in

Three PRs. The order is load-bearing, not a preference.

1. billy#287 — the card verification signals and the services/authorize_payment_method endpoint.
2. deployhq#1150 — the admission gate that consumes both, free-plan denial, support articles.
3. deployhq-cli#43 — corrects CLI guidance that this work makes false. (this PR)

If DeployHQ ships before billy, metered provisioning breaks for every account. The gate calls services/authorize_payment_method; against a billy that lacks it the client raises Billy::Errors::NotFound, and the gate treats any error as "could not check" and fails closed — so nobody, including paying customers, can create a Managed VPS or Static Hosting site until billy catches up.

The reverse is safe. billy deployed early just adds card fields nobody reads yet and an endpoint nobody calls.

The CLI is last and is not load-bearing at runtime — its change is static text — but the copy describes server behaviour, so tag its release only once DeployHQ is deployed. CLI releases are manual and tag-driven; merging to main publishes nothing.

Backward compatibility

Human-readable next_step text only. The plan_limit_reached reason code, the retryable flag, and details are unchanged, so anything branching on the structured fields is unaffected.

Review round

Raised by	Finding	Outcome
Codex P2	Links built from the raw DEPLOYHQ_ACCOUNT, so the supported full-hostname form (acme.deployhq.com) produced acme.deployhq.com.deployhq.com — still a dead link	Fixed in f7119cd
CodeRabbit	Tests did not pin Retryable or Details["target"], which this description claims are unchanged	Fixed in f7119cd

The Codex finding is worth reading even if you skim the rest: pkg/sdk/client.go:97-99 trims a .deployhq.com suffix and its comment names that exact doubled-host failure, so the full-hostname form is genuinely supported and this guidance was still broken for those users. The fix reads Client.Account() rather than duplicating the trim, which also makes a WithBaseURL override work — something the hardcoded .deployhq.com got wrong too.

Known gap, not fixed here

static_hosting_eligible / managed_vps_eligible come from Users::ProfilesController#capability_flags, which returns plain beta_features? — they have never reflected the payment gate. So the pre-flight can still report "eligible" and the create then fails server-side. Pre-existing, but the free-plan denial makes it far more likely to be hit. Fixing it means calling Billy on every profile fetch, so it wants a decision rather than a drive-by.

Status

go build, go vet and go test ./... all clean. 262 tests in internal/commands, the package this touches. CI green (lint + test).

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Bug Fixes

  • Improved dhq launch guidance when plan limits are reached.
  • Added account-specific links for packages and payment details.
  • Clarified that Managed VPS and Static Hosting require a paid plan and valid payment method.
  • Removed outdated plan and billing URLs and messaging.

• Documentation

  • Updated the changelog and embedded launch guidance with the corrected eligibility and billing information.

[thdurante]

@claude review

[thdurante]

@codex review

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Claude Code is working…

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[coderabbitai]

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

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Run ID: 2dae7357-1ab1-498f-a6bd-457710032574

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 3de5053 and f7119cd.

📒 Files selected for processing (3)

• CHANGELOG.md
• internal/commands/launch.go
• internal/commands/launch_test.go

🚧 Files skipped from review as they are similar to previous changes (2)

• CHANGELOG.md
• internal/commands/launch_test.go

Included review availability: 2 reviews are currently available. Based on recent review activity, included reviews refill at 5 per hour.

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Walkthrough

The launch command now uses the normalized account subdomain to generate target-specific plan-limit guidance. Tests and documentation describe paid-plan and payment-method requirements with account-specific URLs.

Changes

Plan-limit guidance

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Account-specific launch guidance internal/commands/launch.go	launchCheckPlanLimits receives the SDK client, normalizes the account subdomain, and generates account-specific packages and payment-details URLs for Static Hosting and Managed VPS errors.
Guidance validation and documentation internal/commands/launch_test.go, CHANGELOG.md, skills/deployhq/references/launch.md	Tests validate normalized URLs, updated requirements, preserved error metadata, and eligible paths. The changelog and agent reference document paid-plan and payment-method requirements.

Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~10 minutes

Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to f7119

This PR corrects user-facing launch guidance and links without changing runtime behavior or structured responses; no actionable merge-blocking risk remains beyond normal checks and review.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly summarizes the main changes to free-plan guidance and account links for dhq launch plan-limit errors.

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch metered-abuse-controls

---

_{Comment @coderabbitai help to get the list of available commands.}

[chatgpt-codex-connector]

💡 Codex Review

deployhq-cli/internal/commands/launch.go

Lines 1256 to 1257 in 3de5053

	"https://%s.deployhq.com/account/packages and your payment details at "+
	"https://%s.deployhq.com/account/payment_details",

Normalize full-hostname account values before building links

When credentials specify the supported full-hostname form (for example, DEPLOYHQ_ACCOUNT=acme.deployhq.com), launchEnsureAuth returns that raw value even though sdk.newClient normalizes it for API requests. Interpolating it here therefore produces https://acme.deployhq.com.deployhq.com/account/..., so the replacement guidance still sends these users to dead links. Normalize the account value before formatting the URLs or derive the hostname from the configured client.

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[thdurante]

@coderabbitai full review

[coderabbitai]

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Full review finished.

[coderabbitai]

Actionable comments posted: 1

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Inline comments:
In `@internal/commands/launch_test.go`:
- Around line 884-895: Update both ineligible plan-limit tests, including the
Static Hosting case around launchCheckPlanLimits and
TestLaunchCheckPlanLimits_VPSIneligible, to assert Retryable is false and
Details["target"] matches the relevant protocol, using detect.ProtocolManagedVPS
for the VPS case. Preserve the existing reason and guidance URL assertions.

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• Create a new PR with the fixes

---

ℹ️ Review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: 33e71806-fffc-4bf7-bb2a-ecf17b174e1a

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 66bb620 and 3de5053.

📒 Files selected for processing (4)

• CHANGELOG.md
• internal/commands/launch.go
• internal/commands/launch_test.go
• skills/deployhq/references/launch.md

Included review availability: 2 reviews are currently available. Based on recent review activity, included reviews refill at 5 per hour.

[thdurante]

@codex — this is a reply to your review at #43 (comment).

Addressed in f7119cd. Verified before fixing, and you are right: pkg/sdk/client.go:97-99 trims a .deployhq.com suffix from the account, and its own comment names the failure it is avoiding — "otherwise we'd build .deployhq.com.deployhq.com". So the full-hostname form is genuinely supported, and building the guidance URLs from the raw credential produced exactly the doubled host you describe. A dead link, which is the precise defect this PR was opened to fix.

launchCheckPlanLimits now takes the *sdk.Client — already in scope at the callsite — and reads Client.Account(), which derives the subdomain from the already-normalised base URL. Two reasons for that over duplicating the TrimSuffix: the normalisation stays in one place rather than two that can drift, and a WithBaseURL override is honoured, which the hardcoded .deployhq.com also got wrong.

Test added for a full-hostname account asserting both the correct URL and the absence of the doubled host.

Thanks for the catch.

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