stage is one of the deployment mode which we use to do application deployment on weblogic.

If u use stage mode then admin server will copy the deployment file to staging directories of managed servers and deployment is being done on managed servers using its copied local copy. There are other two type of modes are available, NO-stage mode - In this mode Admin wont copy the files to managed servers and all managed servers will use the copy of the application file from source directory which means all the manged servers should have access to that application deployment file. third mode is - External stage - In this mode , we need to copy the files manually to all servers staging location before starting the deployment default staging directory is $DOMAIN_HOME/servers/<ServerName>/stage