# Ship

> Use when shipping, deploying, creating a PR, or preparing a release. Review staleness detection, gated review requirement with override options, and a structured release flow. Use when: user says "ship it", "create a PR", "let's deploy", "ready to merge", or is preparing code for release.

- Skill: `jessedegans/ship` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add jessedegans/ship`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/jessedegans/ship/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: DevOps & Infra
- Author: jessedegans (https://skillmd.com/u/jessedegans)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/jessedegans/ship

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# Ship

## Pre-flight

1. Confirm you're not on the base branch
2. **Review staleness check:**
   - Has the code been reviewed? When?
   - How many commits since last review?
   - If >5 commits since review: the review is stale. Re-review or acknowledge the risk.

## Review gate

Code review should be complete before shipping. Three options when it isn't:

- **A) Ship anyway** - you accept the risk, document why in the PR description
- **B) Stop and review first** - the right default
- **C) Too small to need review** - trivial changes (typos, config, one-liner fixes)

## Merge and test

1. Fetch and merge base branch; resolve conflicts
2. Run the full test suite
3. Triage failures: pre-existing vs. introduced by this change. Only your failures block.

## Version and changelog

1. Auto-detect bump level:
   - **Patch** - bug fixes, small changes
   - **Minor** - new features, non-breaking API changes
   - **Major** - breaking changes (ask explicitly, never auto-bump major)
2. Generate changelog from diff: summarize what changed and why

## Ship it

1. Split large diffs into logical, bisectable commits
2. Create PR with clear description
3. Push