Use when cutting a release — composing the `## [vX.Y.Z]` `CHANGELOG.md` section, picking the version bump, walking commits since the last tag, and pushing the tag. Pushing the tag triggers GoReleaser + provenance signing, a public GitHub Release and Discord announcement, and an ArgoCD deploy of the maintainer's instance.
Use when cutting a release — composing the `## [vX.Y.Z]` `CHANGELOG.md` section, picking the version bump, walking commits since the last tag, and pushing the tag. Pushing the tag triggers GoReleaser + provenance signing, a public GitHub Release and Discord announcement, and an ArgoCD deploy of the maintainer's instance.
Tag a release
Scope
This skill drafts the release artifacts and pushes the tag. Land the CHANGELOG entry on main first, then tag a commit that contains it.
Pushing a v* tag runs the whole pipeline. From .github/workflows/ci.yml:
image — Docker build/push, then bumps values-dev.yaml on development (dev refresh).
goreleaser — binaries + SBOMs → public GitHub Release.
predeploy-smoke — gated on v*.
deploy-prod — gated on v* + a green goreleaser; bumps charts/bindery/values.yaml on main, which the ArgoCD "prod" app syncs. Despite the name this is the maintainer's own instance, not a customer fleet — a bad deploy is their problem to roll forward, not an outage.
notify-discord — posts a public announcement to the Discord server.
The genuinely outward-facing parts are the GitHub Release and the Discord post: other people download those binaries and read that announcement. The deploy itself is low-stakes. So don't ceremonialise tagging — but do mention any known-unverified fix riding along, since that lands in public release notes.
The deploy bot owns the chore(deploy): promote bindery to vX.Y.Z [skip ci] commit — never write that by hand.
Picking the version
SemVer per the CHANGELOG header reference:
Change shape
Bump
Backwards-incompatible API/config (env var renamed, removed feature, breaking schema migration)
Group commits by Conventional Commits type → CHANGELOG sub-heading:
Commit type
CHANGELOG section
feat
Added
perf, behaviour-changing chore
Changed
fix
Fixed
docs (user-facing only)
Docs
Removals / deprecations
Removed
Skip release-internal commits (chore(release), chore(deploy), [skip ci] from bots).
Maintainer style
Read the most recent two ## [vX.Y.Z] sections in CHANGELOG.md before drafting:
Long, explanatory bullets — not one-liners. State the user-visible behaviour change, then the why and the internal mechanism. Examples in CHANGELOG.md v1.4.0–v1.4.3 are the model.
Reference PR numbers ((#NN)) and closes #NN when applicable.
Code identifiers, env vars, and file paths in backticks. Bold the leading phrase of each bullet.
Date in YYYY-MM-DD, line below the heading.
Pre-tag checklist
CHANGELOG section drafted with the right version, date, and groupings.
Every PR merged since $PREV is represented (or deliberately skipped — internal-only refactors).
Version bump aligns with SemVer rules above (no surprise majors hidden in minor bumps).
docs/upgrade-v2.md extended if any breaking-change behaviour shipped.
CHANGELOG entry is merged to main — the release step reads it at the tagged commit and aborts if missing.
main is green (build, backend suite, frontend) at the commit being tagged.
Any known-unverified fix in the release is called out to the maintainer before pushing.
Every reporter and outside contributor behind a fix is credited by name. Credit was routine through v1.30.2 and then lapsed for five straight releases. Fragments often carry the credit already, so check it survived the rewrite when assembling: the v1.33.1 assembly dropped "Thanks ianepreston for both reproductions" and left the person who reported eight of its ten fixes unnamed. Discord handles are fine; older entries credit cleb, PixieApples, Daize and others who have no GitHub account.
Anything cut from this release is checked against what is still shipping. For every item deferred during planning, ask whether something in the release depends on it. Deferring a fix is fine; deferring it in the release that ships the feature which needs it is how v1.33.0 shipped #1780's unconditional box-set prune on the ingestion path while leaving series fill unfiltered (#2239).
A fix to shared state or shared data has had its sibling consumers grepped. #2188 wired supplement ranking into the scan loop's two call sites and missed LibrarySnapshot.FindExisting, which consumes the same walk (#2240). Same shape as the #2211/#2216 import break. Find every caller, not just the one in the bug report.
A re-landed revert has been re-tested against whatever changed underneath it. #2041 was held back by #2093 specifically so it would not ship beside the metadata profile filters. When it re-landed in v1.33.0 its own guardrail tests still passed, but nobody exercised it against those filters, which is exactly where it broke (#2241).
Tagging
Annotated tag on a commit that contains the CHANGELOG entry, then push:
git tag -a vX.Y.Z <commit> -m "vX.Y.Z"
git push origin vX.Y.Z
Then watch the run — deploy-prod and notify-discord are the ones that matter:
gh run list --workflow=ci.yml --limit 3
gh run watch <run-id>
If the release fails after deploy-prod has already run, fix forward with a patch release; don't delete and re-push the tag.
Don't
Don't tag a commit whose CHANGELOG entry isn't merged to main — the release step aborts.
Don't delete or force-move a pushed tag to "fix" a release; cut a patch release instead.
Don't edit charts/bindery/values.yaml image digest — auto-bumped by the deploy bot per [skip ci] commits.
Don't compose CHANGELOG entries during ordinary feature work — only at release time. The commits skill explicitly defers CHANGELOG to this skill.
The build has soaked on dev. A v* tag deploys dev and prod from the same run, so tagging immediately after the last merge means the first real exercise of the release is by users. v1.33.0 drew ten issues within twelve hours, every one of them findable by leaving it on dev overnight. For a minor, sleep on it. For a patch fixing a live incident, say plainly that you are skipping the soak and why.
