pre-release

name

pre-release

description

Pre-push / pre-release checklist. Runs Rector, Pint, Pest, PHPStan, audits README + `.ai/` docs for staleness, then commits + pushes, watches CI for green, and drafts release notes against the verified SHA. Delegates the README audit to the `readme` skill and the release-notes drafting to the `release-notes` skill — this skill owns the gauntlet ordering and SHA-pinning, not the doc content. Activate before: pushing to remote, tagging a release, writing release notes, or when user mentions: pre-release, pre-push, release checklist, ship, cut release, release notes.

Pre-Release Checklist

Run this gauntlet before pushing commits that may be tagged as a release. It catches regressions the two-tier backend-quality skill skips — Rector drift, stale docs shipped to downstream projects via package-boost:sync — then gates the release on CI-matrix green and pins a verified SHA into the release notes.

When to Use This Skill

Activate when:

• About to push commits that will land in a release
• About to write or update release notes
• User says "ship it", "cut a release", "pre-push", "release checklist"
• A feature/fix is fully implemented and quality-gated

Do NOT use mid-development — this is a completion-level skill.

The user cuts the tag, not you. The user runs gh release create (or the GitHub UI) themselves — tagging is irreversible-ish and a release-visibility decision the user owns. Do NOT execute tag/release-create commands. Once steps 1-7 are done and the release notes file exists with a green-CI SHA pinned, report "ready to tag" and stop. The skill's job ends only once step 8b (post-tag watch) has confirmed the tag-ref + release-event workflows are green — "tag cut" is not the finish line.

Workflow

Run in this order. Each must pass before moving to the next. Fix issues as they surface; do not batch.

Always append || true to verification commands so output is captured even on failure (per repo CLAUDE.md rule). Pass/fail is determined from the captured output, not the exit status alone.

The full order is 1 → 2 → 3 → 4 → 5 → commit → push → 6 → 7 (draft notes) → user cuts tag → 8a (pre-tag gate) → 8b (post-tag watch). Do not jump from local checks straight to drafting release notes. The release-notes file is written only after the changes have been committed, pushed, and CI is green on that exact SHA. Notes claim "tests pass on the CI matrix"; CI must have produced that fact first.

1. Rector

vendor/bin/rector process || true

Must report 0 files changed. If Rector modifies files, review the diff, commit the changes (or fold them into the release commit), and re-run until clean.

2. Pint

vendor/bin/pint --dirty --format agent || true

Must be clean. Re-run after Rector — Rector fixes can introduce style drift.

3. Full Test Suite

vendor/bin/pest || true

Must show 0 failures.

Local green ≠ CI green. Local Pest runs one OS/PHP/Laravel combo; the CI matrix spans Windows + multiple PHP/Laravel + prefer-lowest/prefer-stable cells. Step 6 (CI gate) is the authoritative test boundary across the matrix. Use ci-matrix-troubleshooting when a matrix cell goes red.

4. PHPStan

vendor/bin/phpstan analyse --memory-limit=2G || true

Must show 0 errors. Fix real issues — do not pad the baseline. See backend-quality skill for baseline rules.

5. Documentation freshness audit

Release-worthy features change user-visible behavior, so README.md and the .ai/ files we ship to downstream projects (via package-boost:sync) can drift silently. Every release must audit both. Add or edit docs only where they reflect a real change — never bloat for the sake of release notes.

5a. README

Apply the readme skill's staleness-audit pattern to README.md against the commits in this release. Resolve <last-tag> with gh release list --limit 1 --json tagName -q '.[0].tagName', then walk every diff area in git log <last-tag>..HEAD: install snippet, version constraints, feature bullets, configuration tables, public-API signatures, and code examples touching behavior altered in this release.

Apply the heuristic from the readme skill: would a user reading the README after the release see outdated advice? If yes, update. Delete stale content aggressively — bloat compounds release-over-release.

Do NOT edit CHANGELOG.md — .github/workflows/update-changelog.yml prepends the release body automatically on publish.

5b. Laravel Boost skills + guidelines

.ai/skills/ and .ai/guidelines/ are synced by Laravel Boost (vendor/bin/testbench package-boost:sync) to CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, .claude/skills/, and .github/skills/. Those generated files ship with the package and are read by downstream projects' AI tooling.

If anything in .ai/ changed (or you suspect generated files have drifted from sources), sync and verify:

vendor/bin/testbench package-boost:sync || true
git status --short .claude/ .github/ CLAUDE.md AGENTS.md

All generated files must be committed together with their .ai/ sources (per the ai-guidelines skill). If sync reports total: N unchanged for every category, nothing to commit.

Commit + push

After all 1-5 pass, commit the release-worthy changes. Stage by explicit paths (never git add -A) so secrets or stray binaries can't slip in. Use Conventional Commits (feat(scope): …, fix(scope): …, chore(scope): …, docs(scope): …) — match the recent log style (git log --oneline -10).

git add <paths>
git commit -m "<conventional message>"
git push origin main

If the local branch is behind origin/main (CI's update-changelog workflow commits back), git pull --rebase origin main after committing local work — the changelog commit doesn't conflict with source code.

6. CI green-light gate (after push, before release notes)

Local green ≠ CI green. Matrix cells frequently catch env-shape bugs (missing APP_KEY, prefer-lowest peer constraints, Windows fs races) that local dev never sees. A green tag on a red CI is a broken release.

Scope is per-commit, not per-run. Multiple workflows have opinions about the same SHA. gh run watch follows a single run and silently skips the others. Enumerate by commit SHA and wait for every matching run:

SHA=$(git rev-parse HEAD)

# Settle — GitHub takes several seconds to register runs against the new SHA.
# Querying too early returns an empty list; running=0 would falsely signal green.
# Use the Bash tool with run_in_background=true if you want to do other work
# while waiting; do NOT chain shorter sleeps to work around the harness sleep cap.
until [ "$(gh run list --commit "$SHA" --json databaseId -q 'length')" -gt 0 ]; do sleep 5; done

# List every workflow run tied to this SHA
gh run list --commit "$SHA" --json databaseId,name,event,status,conclusion

# Wait for every run to reach a terminal state
while true; do
    total=$(gh run list --commit "$SHA" --json databaseId -q 'length')
    running=$(gh run list --commit "$SHA" --json status -q '[.[] | select(.status != "completed")] | length')
    [ "$total" -gt 0 ] && [ "$running" -eq 0 ] && break
    sleep 15
done

# Then assert all success/skipped
failed=$(gh run list --commit "$SHA" --json conclusion,name -q '[.[] | select(.conclusion != "success" and .conclusion != "skipped")] | length')
[ "$failed" -eq 0 ] || { echo "CI red on $SHA"; gh run list --commit "$SHA";  1; }

Pass criteria: every run for this commit has conclusion in {success, skipped}. Skipped is fine — path-filtered workflows are expected to skip when the release commit touches docs only.

Don't rely on a "latest run" heuristic. gh run list --branch main --limit 1 may pick a run from a completely different push — the commit-SHA filter is the only reliable anchor.

On failure:

1. Pull the failure log via gh run view <id> --log-failed (or gh api /repos/<owner>/<repo>/actions/jobs/<job-id>/logs if --log-failed is empty).
2. Reproduce locally — often requires the same env shape as CI (blank APP_KEY, clean composer install, specific PHP/Laravel combo). Use ci-matrix-troubleshooting for matrix-cell-specific issues.
3. Fix with a new commit on the same branch.
4. Push and re-run step 6 against the new HEAD.

Do NOT write release notes until CI is green. Release notes claim CI-matrix facts; CI is the evidence.

Workflows triggered by release (e.g. release-benchmark, update-changelog) run AFTER tag creation — they're outside this gate by design and are watched in step 8b.

on: push workflows re-fire on the tag-ref push (creating a release pushes a tag ref). Those re-fire runs are watched in step 8b too — they sometimes catch environment-shape failures that the main-branch run narrowly missed.

7. Release notes (ONLY after step 6 CI-green)

This is where agents most commonly slip: running the local gauntlet, then jumping straight to Write internal/release-notes-<version>.md without committing, pushing, or watching CI. Do not do that.

The body of the notes — when to override GitHub's auto-format, structure, version-matrix bumps, ecosystem-dep wording — is owned by the release-notes skill. This step adds only the pre-release-specific concerns: the version pick, the SHA-pinning preflight, and where the file lives on disk.

Choose the version

Latest tag: gh release list --limit 1 --json tagName -q '.[0].tagName'. The package follows semver while pre-1.0:

• New user-visible feature, additions to public API → minor bump (0.3.0 → 0.4.0)
• Bug fix only / docs / refactor → patch bump (0.3.0 → 0.3.1)
• Breaking change to public API (renamed config key, removed method) → minor bump pre-1.0 (with a clear BREAKING: line in the notes)

Preflight — three checks before Write

# 1. Working tree must be clean
git status --short || true

# 2. HEAD must be pushed
[ "$(git rev-parse HEAD)" = "$(git rev-parse origin/main)" ] && echo "pushed" || echo "NOT pushed"

# 3. Every CI run for this SHA must be terminal + {success, skipped}
SHA=$(git rev-parse HEAD)
gh run list --commit "$SHA" --json name,status,conclusion

Only when (1) status is empty, (2) echoes pushed, and (3) every run is completed + {success, skipped} may you Write internal/release-notes-<version>.md.

Drafting the body

Hand the body off to the release-notes skill. That skill decides whether this release warrants overriding GitHub's auto-generated format (it usually doesn't), how to layer Highlights / BREAKING / migration sections when override is justified, and how to phrase the version-matrix shift for the Laravel ecosystem.

Three pre-release-specific overlays apply on top of whatever the release-notes skill produces:

1. Pin the verified SHA in the very first line. GitHub strips HTML comments when rendering the release body, so this is invisible to readers but greppable by step 8a:

   <!-- verified-sha: aab58d2aa7c6e3496d0eece82c18566e21a2e70a -->
   

   The SHA is the exact git rev-parse HEAD step 6 proved green. Step 8a's pre-tag gate fails closed if the notes-file SHA does not match the live remote tip (i.e. someone landed more commits between draft and tag).

2. Public-artifact scrub. internal/release-notes-*.md is copied verbatim into the public GitHub release (and from there into CHANGELOG.md + Packagist). Internal planning files (internal/specs/*.md) are gitignored and may freely reference internal workflow identifiers; the release-notes file is not internal. Before Write, scrub the draft for:

   • Peer / instance / channel framing: "sourced from peer e0cp6lq3", "via claude-peers dogfood"
   • Claude-Code-internal phrasing: "agent-driven", "via the rector companion peer"
   • Any 8-character alphanumeric sequence that looks like a peer ID (grep -E '[a-z0-9]{8}')
   • Bare claude-code, claude-peers, or peer mentions

   Replace with neutral framing: "sourced from production dogfood", "real-world adoption feedback", named public contributors only (GitHub usernames / consenting downstream apps), or technical reasoning untethered from any internal session.

3. CI handles two things automatically — do not do them manually:

   • CHANGELOG.md is prepended with the release body by .github/workflows/update-changelog.yml on release publish.
   • If the package ships any benchmark workflow that decorates the release body, do not paste benchmark numbers manually — let CI fill the markers.

Once the file is written, report "ready to tag" with the SHA and the version, and stop. The user takes it from there.

8. Pre-tag gate + post-tag watch

Step 6 proves CI green at draft time. Step 8 proves CI is still green at tag time and catches failures that only show up on the tag-ref push.

8a. Pre-tag gate

The user runs this immediately before gh release create (in their terminal — not the agent's). It re-verifies HEAD hasn't drifted, the notes file pins this exact SHA, and CI is still green.

SHA=$(git rev-parse HEAD)
VERSION="<version>"  # e.g. 0.4.0
NOTES="internal/release-notes-${VERSION}.md"

# A. Notes file pins this SHA
grep -qE "^<!-- verified-sha: $SHA -->$" "$NOTES" || { echo "NOTES SHA DRIFT — HEAD=$SHA, notes say $(grep verified-sha "$NOTES")"; exit 1; }

# B. HEAD matches the LIVE remote tip — not the cached tracking ref.
#    `ls-remote` always hits the remote; `git rev-parse origin/main` is stale until fetch.
LIVE_TIP=$(git ls-remote origin refs/heads/main | awk '{print $1}')
[ "$SHA" = "$LIVE_TIP" ] || { echo "HEAD DRIFT — HEAD=$SHA live origin/main=$LIVE_TIP"; exit 1; }

# C. Every CI run for this SHA still terminal + {success, skipped}
failed=$(gh run list --commit "$SHA" --json conclusion -q '[.[] | select(.conclusion != "success" and .conclusion != "skipped")] | length')
running=$(gh run list --commit "$SHA" --json status -q '[.[] | select(.status != "completed")] | length')
[ "$running" -eq 0 ] && [ "$failed" -eq 0 ] || { echo "CI NOT GREEN — running=$running failed=$failed"; gh run list --commit "$SHA";  1; }

 

The ls-remote call is the key difference from the step 7 preflight (which uses the local tracking ref). Step 7 runs right after push when the tracking ref is fresh; step 8a can run minutes or hours later, and the only safe way to prove HEAD is still the tip is to hit the remote.

If any check fails, do NOT tag. Fix the drift, re-run steps 6-7 against the new SHA, then retry 8a.

8b. Post-tag watch

Creating the release pushes a tag ref, which re-fires on: push workflows (e.g. run-tests) against that ref. Watch those runs — they're not part of the pre-tag gate and can fail even when 8a passed (Windows fs races, prefer-lowest combos that narrowly missed the main-branch run). Also watch release-event decorators (update-changelog, anything else triggered on release: published).

Do not use gh run list --branch "$TAG". The --branch flag's semantics for tag refs are undocumented — sometimes works, sometimes returns empty. The reliable selector is the tag's commit SHA plus a jq filter on headBranch == $TAG. Both push-event (tag-ref re-fire) and release-event runs attach to that SHA with headBranch set to the tag name.

Run 8b strictly after gh release create has completed. The tag must already exist on the remote; fetch it locally before resolving the SHA.

TAG="$VERSION"
git fetch --tags origin --quiet
TAG_SHA=$(git rev-list -n 1 "$TAG")

# Wait until every tag-scoped run is terminal
waited=0
while [ "$waited" -lt 900 ]; do
    running=$(gh run list --commit "$TAG_SHA" --json status,headBranch \
      -q "[.[] | select(.headBranch == \"$TAG\") | select(.status != \"completed\")] | length")
    total=$(gh run list --commit "$TAG_SHA" --json databaseId,headBranch \
      -q "[.[] | select(.headBranch == \"$TAG\")] | length")
    [ "$total" -gt 0 ] && [ "$running" -eq 0 ] && break
    sleep 15
    waited=$((waited + 15))
done
[ "$total" -gt 0 ] || { echo "NO TAG-REF RUNS after ${waited}s — investigate"; exit 1; }

failed=$(gh run list --commit "$TAG_SHA" --json conclusion,headBranch,name \
  -q "[.[] | select(.headBranch == \"$TAG\") | select(.conclusion != \"success\" and .conclusion != \"skipped\")] | length")
[ "$failed" -eq 0 ] || { echo "TAG-REF CI RED on $TAG ($TAG_SHA)"; gh run list --commit "$TAG_SHA"; exit 1; }

If red:

1. Investigate via gh run view <id> --log-failed.
2. If the failure reveals a real bug (not just flake): fix on main, cut a patch release. Do not rewrite the tag.
3. If update-changelog failed: CHANGELOG.md won't be prepended — re-run the workflow once the underlying cause is fixed, or prepend the entry manually (rare).

Rule: the skill is not done until 8b goes green. "Tag cut" is not the finish line; "tag-ref CI green + release-event workflows green" is.

Quick Reference

Step	Command	Pass criteria
1. Rector	vendor/bin/rector process || true	0 files changed
2. Pint	vendor/bin/pint --dirty --format agent || true	clean
3. Tests	vendor/bin/pest || true	0 failures
4. PHPStan	vendor/bin/phpstan analyse --memory-limit=2G || true	0 errors
5a. README	apply readme skill staleness audit vs git log <last-tag>..HEAD	no stale claims; new behavior listed
5b. Boost docs	vendor/bin/testbench package-boost:sync || true	.ai/ ↔ generated files in sync
commit + push	git add <paths> → git commit → git push origin main	HEAD pushed to origin/main
6. CI green-light	gh run list --commit "$(git rev-parse HEAD)" all complete + no failure	every run for the SHA in {success, skipped}
7. Release notes	preflight + release-notes skill body → Write internal/release-notes-<version>.md	first line is <!-- verified-sha: $SHA -->
8a. Pre-tag gate	one-liner asserts notes-SHA, live-remote tip, CI-still-green before gh release create	prints OK to tag
8b. Post-tag watch	gh run list --commit "$TAG_SHA" filtered by headBranch == $TAG	tag-ref + release-event workflows all green

Important

• Run every step, in order, even if nothing "release-worthy" looks changed. Seemingly unrelated refactors have historically introduced subtle behavior shifts that only the matrix catches.
• Do not push if any step 1-5 fails. Fix, then restart from step 1 — earlier steps may re-break after a later fix.
• Steps 5a and 5b are the most common source of silent drift — the README and shipped skills are read by downstream users, and bloat accumulates fast. Delete stale content before adding new.
• Step 6 (CI gate) is non-skippable: CI runs against a clean env (no ambient APP_KEY, no cached auth user, fresh composer install) and frequently catches env-shape bugs that local dev never sees. Waiting 2 minutes for CI green is cheaper than tagging a broken release.
• Step 7 (release notes) is gated by step 6 — the release-notes file must not exist on disk until CI is green on the pushed commit. If the step-7 preflight fails any of its three conditions, the draft is premature; go back to whichever earlier step is incomplete.
• Step 8a re-verifies the live remote tip (git ls-remote, not the cached origin/main) so a concurrent push can't slip a stale commit through. 8b uses --commit "$TAG_SHA" + headBranch == $TAG (not --branch "$TAG") so the tag-ref on: push re-fires and on: release decorators are both caught. Run both every time, even for one-commit patch releases.
• pest --parallel on Windows prefer-lowest has a known FS race in PackageManifest::write() → rename(). Local parallel-pest green does not prove CI-matrix green. Steps 6 and 8b are the authoritative test gates.