Release Skill

Unified entry point for all release operations. Delegates to the right subcommand template based on the first argument.

Subcommands

Command	What it does
/release plan	Scope version, analyze milestones/issues/tags, create GitHub milestone
/release verify [commits|tags|history]	Integrity checks: commit↔CHANGELOG, tag↔releases↔artifacts, history audit
/release changelog	Generate CHANGELOG entries + version bump propagation across manifest files
/release full	Full orchestrator: plan → health → fix blockers → docs → tag+ship
/release	Auto-detect what's needed (see below)

Auto-Detection (no subcommand)

LAST_TAG=$(git describe --tags --abbrev=0 --match "v*" 2>/dev/null)
UNRELEASED=$(git log --no-merges --oneline "${LAST_TAG:-$(git rev-list --max-parents=0 HEAD)}..HEAD" | wc -l)
OPEN_MILESTONE=$(gh api "repos/$(gh repo view --json nameWithOwner --jq '.nameWithOwner')/milestones" \
  --jq '[.[] | select(.state=="open")] | length' 2>/dev/null || echo 0)
CLOSED_ISSUES=$(gh api "repos/$(gh repo view --json nameWithOwner --jq '.nameWithOwner')/milestones" \
  --jq '[.[] | select(.state=="open" and .open_issues==0)] | length' 2>/dev/null || echo 0)

Decision tree:

1. Milestone exists with 0 open issues → suggest /release full
2. Unreleased commits > 0, no milestone → suggest /release plan
3. Clean main, recent tag → suggest /release verify tags
4. Default → show the subcommand table above and ask what's needed

Execution

Load the template matching the subcommand and follow it completely:

• plan → ~/.claude/skills/release/templates/plan.md
• verify → ~/.claude/skills/release/templates/verify.md
• changelog → ~/.claude/skills/release/templates/changelog.md
• full → ~/.claude/skills/release/templates/cycle.md

Pass any additional args through:

• /release verify commits → load verify.md, execute the commits subcommand
• /release verify tags → load verify.md, execute the tags subcommand
• /release verify history → load verify.md, execute the history subcommand

Gotchas

• Auto-detection commands fail soft (|| echo 0) when gh is unauthenticated or there's no GitHub remote — a 0 open-milestone count may mean "no GitHub access", not "no milestones"; verify before trusting the decision tree.
• git describe --tags --match "v*" only finds tags reachable from HEAD — a tag on a sibling branch is invisible, so "no last tag" can be a false negative.
• /release changelog propagates the version bump across manifest files (pyproject.toml, package.json, etc.) — verify all manifests moved together; a partial bump ships mismatched versions.
• /release full tags and ships — it is not a dry run. Run /release plan first to confirm scope.