How to roll back a broken mobile onboarding experiment without an app update

You shipped a new onboarding variant Friday afternoon. By Saturday, support tickets mention a blank screen. Trial starts drop 40%. The engineer who published the flow is offline. App Store review is five days away. You need to roll back a broken mobile onboarding experiment now, not after the next binary.

If onboarding runs through Rheo (or an equivalent remote flow platform), rollback is a channel pin change, not an emergency release. This playbook covers detection, immediate containment, rollback steps, verification, and post-incident hygiene so the same failure mode is harder next time.

When rollback is the right response

Not every dip needs rollback. Distinguish incident from noise.

Signal	Likely incident	Likely noise
Crash rate on flow screens	Spike	Flat
Completion rate	-30% or more same day	-5% over 3 days
Blank or stuck screen reports	Multiple tickets	One old device
RevenueCat errors at paywall step	Clustered failed outcomes	Sandbox only
Experiment arm only affected	Yes	All traffic down (SDK or API)

Rollback when user-facing functionality is broken or materially worse with high confidence. Pause experiment when results are unclear but not catastrophic. Let run when variance is within pre-registered bounds.

Architecture: what you are rolling back

Understanding the object model speeds incident response.

Concept	What it is	Rollback lever
Flow draft	Unpublished editor state	Irrelevant to live users
Published version	Immutable snapshot	Pin target
Channel	SDK route (ch_live_…)	Assignment
Direct pin	100% traffic to one version	Fastest rollback
Experiment	Split traffic across versions	End or pause, then pin winner or control
Integration step	RevenueCat paywall node, etc.	Version may reference offering ids

Publishing a new version does not change live traffic until a channel points at it. Rollback means re-pointing the channel to a known-good published version.

Rheo does not manage paywall UI. If the incident is inside RevenueCat paywall templates, rollback may require switching offering or placement in the flow version, or disabling a RevenueCat Experiment in their dashboard. This guide focuses on onboarding flow rollback in Rheo.

Immediate containment (first 15 minutes)

1. Confirm scope

Check Rheo analytics (or your monitoring):

• Which channel? Live vs test.
• Experiment active or direct pin?
• Which variant arms show the cliff?
• App version and platform filters (iOS only often means a platform-specific layer).

2. Notify stakeholders

Short message template:

Onboarding incident: [channel name]
Symptom: [completion down X% / blank screen on step Y]
Action: rolling channel pin to [version label]
Owner: [name]
ETA: 5 minutes

3. Stop bleeding

Choose the fastest path:

Situation	Action
Experiment running	End experiment or set 100% to control arm, then pin control version directly
Direct pin to bad version	Pin previous known-good version
Uncertain which version is good	Pin labeled baseline (pre-black-friday-baseline)
Bad integration config	Pin version before integration change; verify RevenueCat toggle

You do not need App Store review for pin changes. Users pick up assignment on next resolve (typically next cold start or foreground refresh).

Step-by-step rollback procedure

Option A: Roll back direct channel pin

1. Log in to Rheo dashboard → Apps → your app → Channels.
2. Open the affected live channel.
3. Open assignment history or version list.
4. Select the last known-good published version (read label and timestamp).
5. Set assignment to Direct pin to that version.
6. Confirm. If your workspace uses rollout approvals on Scale+, an approver must approve the pin request. For incidents, have approver on call.
7. Document pin change in incident channel.

Option B: Roll back experiment mid-flight

1. Open Experiments on the channel.
2. Note which arm is control (first variant in list).
3. Promote control to channel pin, or end experiment and direct-pin control version.
4. Verify traffic weights show 100% on good version.
5. Archive or label failed variant incident-2026-08-26-do-not-reuse.

Option C: Roll back integration-related failure

If the break is RevenueCat paywall presentation (not Rheo screens):

1. Pin flow version that uses previous offering or placement id.
2. Verify App settings → Integrations → RevenueCat default offering unchanged or revert.
3. Confirm paywall node in pinned version references valid offering.
4. Test on device with sandbox account.

Rheo blocks publish when paywall nodes exist but integration is disabled. A partial misconfiguration may still serve broken handoff edges.

Verification after rollback

Check	Pass criteria
Dashboard completion rate	Recovering toward baseline within hours
Step funnel	Bad screen no longer dominant cliff
Test device cold start	Full path through paywall or dismiss
RevenueCat outcomes	purchase_completed and dismissed fire, not only failed
Support queue	No new blank-screen tickets
Experiment status	Not splitting traffic to bad arm

Keep a test channel (ch_test_…) pinned to candidate versions before live promotion next time. QA on test channel would have caught many incidents.

Rollback without dashboard access

If dashboard is unreachable, escalation paths:

Fallback	Notes
Secondary editor account	Pre-provisioned approver
API automation	If your team scripted channel pins
Pin via support	Vendor support for account lockout only
Feature flag in host app	Only if you built emergency bypass to legacy native onboarding

Best practice: maintain legacy onboarding path in the binary behind a host-app flag for catastrophic Rheo outage. That is engineering-owned, not daily workflow.

Version labeling discipline

Rollback is fast only if good versions are findable.

Bad label	Good label
v2	2026-08-20-baseline-onboarding
Copy of Flow	pre-permission-reorder-control
Test	live-approved-aug-w1

Label at publish time. Include ticket or experiment id in description field.

Preventing repeat incidents

Pre-publish checklist

Item	Owner
Simulator walkthrough all branches	Editor
Test channel pin 24h for internal QA	Editor
Fallback edge on paywall node present	Editor
Publish diff reviewed by second person	Scale approvals policy
Rollback version identified in experiment doc	Growth

Experiment guardrails

Policy	Rationale
No Friday live pins without on-call	Weekend incidents
Max 50% to unproven variant first week	Limit blast radius
Holdout 5 to 10% on major rewrites	Incrementality and safety net
One structural change per experiment	Easier rollback attribution

Monitoring alerts

Configure alerts (even manual daily checks) on:

• Flow starts drop week over week
• Completion rate drop greater than 20%
• Spike in surface_outcome: failed on paywall step
• Crash logs tagged with Rheo screen ids

Post-incident review template

Within 48 hours:

1. Timeline: publish, live pin, detection, rollback, recovery.
2. Root cause: bad layer config, missing fallback, wrong offering id, copy error.
3. Why QA missed: test channel skipped, device matrix gap.
4. Action items: label policy, approval rule, automated test.
5. Do not reuse failed version; fork from last good.

Store review in shared doc linked from experiment ticket.

Relationship to App Store releases

Change	Requires binary?
Channel pin to older published version	No
Channel pin to newer published version	No
New native layer type not in SDK	Yes
SDK upgrade	Yes
RevenueCat SDK major bump	Usually yes

Rollback in Rheo assumes the broken experience was introduced via remote publish, not via a new SDK that cannot render an old manifest. If a new SDK version mis-renders old manifests, rollback may require binary revert, a rarer case.

Summary

Roll back a broken mobile onboarding experiment by pinning the live channel to the last known-good published flow version, or by promoting experiment control to 100% traffic. No App Store update required for flow-level rollback. Verify on device, watch completion recovery, and label versions so the next incident resolves in minutes not days.

Keep a test channel, a named baseline pin, and an on-call approver for production channels. Remote experimentation is only safe when rollback is practiced before you need it.

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