publish-new-release

name

publish-new-release

description

Publishes a new DanceXR release to the documentation website. Creates English release notes from a CHANGELOG, generates all four localized versions, adds the release to the releases index, updates the homepage release card for every locale, and prepares platform-specific release notes for Steam, Google Play, and itch.io. Use this when asked to "publish release [version]" or "create release notes for [version]".

Overview

A full release publication touches five areas, in order:

1. Draft the English release notes from the CHANGELOG
2. Create four localized release note pages (JP, ZH, TW, KR)
3. Add the release to the releases index (releases.md, all five locales)
4. Update the homepage release card in all five index.md files
5. Prepare platform-specific release notes under notes/[version]/

Related work that is handled by other skills, not this one:

• Merging release highlights into feature pages and features.md → update-feature-docs
• Re-translating any pages that changed as a result → translate-docs

The inputs you need before starting:

• The version string (e.g., 2026.4)
• The CHANGELOG content — either a file path or pasted inline

---

Step 1: Draft the English release notes

Read the existing most-recent release file (e.g., dancexr/releases/2026.3.md) to understand the writing style and structure.

Create dancexr/releases/[version].md with this exact front matter:

---
layout: release
title: Release [version]
locale: en-US
---

No language links line in the body — the release layout renders this automatically.

Writing guidelines for the body:

• Organise content into named sections matching the CHANGELOG groups (new features, improvements, bug fixes).
• Translate internal/technical CHANGELOG language into user-facing prose. Explain what it means for the user, not how it was implemented.
• Use ## for top-level sections and ### for sub-sections.
• Keep bug fix entries concise — one line each, grouped under a single ### Bug Fixes section.
• American English, sentence case for headers.

---

Step 2: Create localized release note pages

For each of the four languages, create the corresponding file under the language prefix directory.

Language	File path	locale	Translated title prefix
Japanese	jp/dancexr/releases/[version].md	ja-JP	リリース [version]
Simplified Chinese	zh/dancexr/releases/[version].md	zh-CN	发布 [version]
Traditional Chinese	tw/dancexr/releases/[version].md	zh-TW	發布 [version]
Korean	kr/dancexr/releases/[version].md	ko-KR	출시 [version]

Front matter template for each locale (example for Japanese):

---
layout: release
title: リリース [version]
locale: ja-JP
---

No language links line in the body.

Translate the full body content of the English release notes into each target language. Follow all translation guidelines from the translate-docs skill:

• Preserve Markdown structure exactly (same heading hierarchy, same bullet count).
• Never alter URLs.
• Keep code spans, Liquid tags, and HTML untouched.
• The # ... page title heading is conventionally left in English (e.g. # Release [version]); match the existing localized release notes.

---

Step 3: Add the release to the releases index

Five releases.md index pages list every release as year-grouped tiles: dancexr/releases.md plus jp/, zh/, tw/, kr/ prefixed copies.

In every locale's releases.md, add a new tile as the first entry under the current year section (newest first). The tile title uses the locale's translated "Release" label:

  - title: "20XX"
    light: true
    tiles:
      - title: "Release [version]"          # EN
        link: "/dancexr/releases/[version]"

Locale	Tile title	Link
en-US	Release [version]	/dancexr/releases/[version]
ja-JP	リリース [version]	/jp/dancexr/releases/[version]
zh-CN	发布 [version]	/zh/dancexr/releases/[version]
zh-TW	發布 [version]	/tw/dancexr/releases/[version]
ko-KR	출시 [version]	/kr/dancexr/releases/[version]

In the English dancexr/releases.md only, also update the hero block to point at the new release:

• hero_title: Latest Release - [version]
• hero_sub: a one-line headline for the release
• the "Full Release Notes" CTA url: /dancexr/releases/[version]

The four localized index pages use a compact hero with no hero_sub or CTA — add only the tile there.

---

Step 4: Update the homepage release card

Five index.md files each contain a <div class="release-card"> HTML block. Update all five.

The block structure is:

<div class="release-card">
  <p class="release-version">[LATEST_LABEL] — [version]</p>
  <p class="release-headline">[MONTH_YEAR]</p>
  <div class="release-items">
    <div class="release-item">[highlight 1]</div>
    <div class="release-item">[highlight 2]</div>
    <div class="release-item">[highlight 3]</div>
    <div class="release-item">[highlight 4]</div>
  </div>
  <a href="releases/[version]" class="btn-ghost">[NOTES_LABEL]</a>
</div>

Pick 3–4 user-facing highlights from the release notes (not bug fixes). Keep each item to a short phrase (3–8 words), translated per locale.

The notes link is relative — releases/[version] — in all five files (each index.md already lives under its locale directory, so no locale prefix is added).

Per-language labels:

File	latest label	headline format	notes link label
dancexr/index.md	Latest	Month YYYY	Full release notes
jp/dancexr/index.md	最新	YYYY年M月	完全なリリースノート
zh/dancexr/index.md	最新	YYYY年M月	完整版本说明
tw/dancexr/index.md	最新	YYYY年M月	完整版本說明
kr/dancexr/index.md	최신	YYYY년 M월	전체 릴리스 노트

---

Step 5: Prepare platform-specific release notes

Create a notes/[version]/ directory and generate all 7 files in it. Study the most recent existing folder (e.g. notes/2026.5/) as the reference for format and tone.

5a — Google Play (google.txt)

Android audience only. Omit any feature that is Windows/VR/PC/DX12-exclusive (e.g. desktop VR mode, VR hand control, DX12, Steam-specific functionality). Focus on physics, character, and general simulation features that also run on Android.

Format: one short paragraph per language (≈500 characters), wrapped in language tags. All five languages in one file in this order:

<en-US>
…
</en-US>

<zh-CN>
…
</zh-CN>

<zh-TW>
…
</zh-TW>

<ja-JP>
…
</ja-JP>

<ko-KR>
…
</ko-KR>

Each paragraph ends with a localized link to the full release notes URL: https://vrstormlab.com/[locale-prefix]dancexr/releases/[version] (no prefix for English: https://vrstormlab.com/dancexr/releases/[version])

5b — itch.io (itchio.txt)

No language-specific pages on itch.io — brief, all languages in one plain-text file in the order en-US, ja-JP, zh-CN, zh-TW, ko-KR. One short paragraph per language, separated by ---. Each paragraph starts with DanceXR [version] as a heading and ends with a localized link to the full release notes. Keep each paragraph to 3–5 sentences maximum.

5c — Steam (5 separate XML files)

One XML file per language, named:

• steam_english.xml
• steam_japanese.xml
• steam_schinese.xml
• steam_tchinese.xml
• steam_korean.xml

Each file follows this exact XML structure:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<content>
    <string id="title">[Localised title]</string>
    <string id="subtitle">[Localised subtitle — key features, ≤120 chars]</string>
    <string id="summary">[Localised summary — 1-2 sentences, ≤300 chars]</string>
    <string id="body">[Localised body — 3-5 paragraphs of prose]

For full details, visit: [link text](https://vrstormlab.com/[locale-prefix]dancexr/releases/[version])</string>
</content>

Steam notes cover the full PC + VR feature set. The body should be engaging prose (not a bullet list), written as a product announcement. Escape & as & in XML attributes and content.

Per-language title formats:

File	Title format
steam_english.xml	DanceXR Version [version] Released
steam_japanese.xml	DanceXR バージョン [version] をリリース
steam_schinese.xml	DanceXR 版本 [version] 发布
steam_tchinese.xml	DanceXR 版本 [version] 發布
steam_korean.xml	DanceXR 버전 [version] 출시

---

Constraints

• Never use layout: single for release note pages. Always use layout: release.
• Never include a language links line in the body of a release note page — the layout handles this.
• Never add toc: true or a sidebar: block — these are not used by layout: release.
• Never create release note pages for other locales as layout: single even if existing older pages use it — those are legacy.
• Always update all five releases.md index pages and all five homepage index.md files in the same session as creating the release notes.