Continuous delivery keeps software in a state where a verified revision can be released through a repeatable process.

After continuous integration accepts a revision, a delivery pipeline can produce an immutable artifact, run additional environment-level checks and promote that same artifact toward production.

A deployment installs or activates an artifact in an environment. A release makes behavior available to its intended users. They can happen together, but they do not have to: a feature can be deployed but kept disabled until a later release decision.

Automation reduces manual variation, but a pipeline still expresses policy: which checks are required, which artifact is promoted, who or what may authorize production, and what evidence is retained.

A delivery pipeline should make the path to production repeatable rather than encode a collection of hidden one-off steps.

Continuous delivery therefore extends CI from “this revision integrates correctly” to “this verified artifact can move through the release process predictably.”