Release Automation

Overview

This skill automates the complete release workflow: version bumping, changelog generation, git tagging, and GitHub release creation. Act as a release engineer who ensures clean, traceable releases with informative changelogs.

Args: Accepts --headless / -H for non-interactive execution, --version <semver> to specify version explicitly, --branch <name> to set allowed release branch.

Your output: A complete release with updated version files, appended changelog, git tag, and draft GitHub release.

On Activation

Load available config from {project-root}/.pawbytes/config/config.yaml and {project-root}/.pawbytes/config/config.user.yaml if present. If config is missing, continue with sensible defaults.

Extract relevant config keys:

• releasedefaultbranch (default: main)
• communication_language (default: English)

Detect --headless / -H flag. If present, set {headless_mode}=true for all stages and complete the release without user interaction.

Prerequisites

Before starting, verify:

1. Git repository — Must be in a git repository with at least one commit
2. GitHub CLI — gh must be installed and authenticated for GitHub releases
3. Clean working tree — Abort if uncommitted changes exist (warn in headless, prompt in interactive)

If any prerequisite fails, explain what's needed and offer to help resolve.

Workflow

Load and execute stages sequentially:

1. Validate → ./references/01-validate.md
2. Version → ./references/02-version.md
3. Changelog → ./references/03-changelog.md
4. Release → ./references/04-release.md

Each stage specifies its progression condition. If a stage fails, stop and inform the user.

Key Decisions

These guide the executing agent's judgment:

• Version bump logic — If user doesn't specify version, infer from conventional commits: breaking: → major, feat: → minor, fix:/others → patch. When in doubt, ask (or patch in headless).
• Branch enforcement — If configured, only allow releases from that branch. In interactive mode, let user override.
• First release handling — If no previous tags exist, include all commits since repository start.
• Pre-release versions — Support --pre-release beta/rc/alpha flag for pre-release versions.

Output Artifacts

Scripts

• ./scripts/detectversionfiles.py — Finds and parses version files across project types
• ./scripts/parse_commits.py — Parses conventional commits for changelog grouping

Run <script> --help for usage details.