gh-deploy is assuming the docs directory is located in the root of the repository. In my case, I've located my project/site sources in a subdirectory (e.g. /site/docs) and the following check causes gh-deploy to immediately terminate:
https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs/blob/master/mkdocs/gh_deploy.py#L10
I'm not sure if there are other downstream failures from this initial termination, but it would be nice to be able to use gh-deploy in this scenario.