1. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions, which, when executed on a processor, perform an operation for preemptively deploying an updated version of an application being deployed by a deployment pipeline, the operation comprising: initiating a first stage of the deployment pipeline, wherein the deployment pipeline specifies a sequence of stages for deploying the updated version of the application into a production computing environment and wherein the first stage has an associated approval workflow; determining an approval percentage associated with the first stage of the deployment pipeline, wherein the approval percentage is based at least on how often prior versions of the application have successfully completed the approval workflow during prior deployments; and determining that the approval percentage satisfies a minimum threshold associated with the first stage of the deployment pipeline; and deploying an instance of the updated version of the application on one or more computing hosts associated with a second stage of the deployment pipeline, wherein the second stage of the deployment pipeline follows the first stage of the deployment pipeline in the sequence of stages and wherein the updated version of the application is deployed on each of the one or more computing hosts associated with the second stage in an inactive state.