# Nightly releases

A nightly image gives you a fix or a new feature before the next stable release. We build one every day from our development branches, so a nightly image contains every change that we merged the day before.

The build runs our automated tests. It does not go through the full release process, and our Quality Assurance team does not test or approve it.

> **Warning**
>
> **Nightly images are available for 3 months from the build date. After this period, we remove the images, and you cannot pull them from our servers.**
>
> For production, use a stable image. The [Changelog](changelog.md) lists what each stable release contains, and [Deployment](deployment.md) covers the standard installation.

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## Dangers of using nightly builds

Treat every nightly image as unstable. A nightly image can show unexpected behavior, it can contain features that no article documents yet, and it can contain known and unknown defects.

Run a nightly image in a development or UAT environment first. Test the version against your application, and accept it through your own quality process before you run it in production.

If you run a nightly image, you accept these risks.

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## Nightly images usage

A nightly image has a different image name and a different tag format. Everything else, such as environment variables, ports, and data stores, stays as in your stable deployment.

* Image name: `ai-service-nightly` instead of `ai-service`.
* Tag: the version, the build date, and a commit hash, as in `5.4.0-20260923-9af6af45aa`. The date tells you how new the image is.

Example usage:

```yaml
version: "2.2"
services:
	ai-service-nightly:
		image: docker.cke-cs.com/ai-service-nightly:5.4.0-20260923-9af6af45aa # change the version
		ports:
		- "8000:8000"
		# environment variables and other configuration
```

Nightly images are Docker images only. There is no other distribution format.

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## List of available nightly versions

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## Fetching the latest nightly version

To update your application automatically, send a `GET` request to <https://docker.cke-cs.com/api/versions/ai-service-nightly>. The response is a JSON document that holds every available version. Sort the versions by the date in the tag and take the newest one.

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Full index of the Cloud Services documentation: [llms.txt](../../../llms.txt)