Create Release

Create Release

Overview

Orchestrates the full developer-side release workflow: determine the next version, cut a release branch, push it, wait for CI to pass, and open a PR into main. Tagging is intentionally out of scope — it belongs to the CI/CD pipeline as a post-merge step.

Prerequisites

Verify gh is installed and authenticated before doing anything else:

gh auth status

If not authenticated, tell the user: "You need to authenticate first — run gh auth login in your terminal." Stop there.

Workflow

Step 1 — Determine release version

REQUIRED SUB-SKILL: Invoke semantic-versioning (no args needed).

The reported version (e.g. v1.2.0) is now available in conversation for the remaining steps. Use it everywhere vX.Y.Z appears below.

Step 2 — Detect branching strategy and create the release branch

Detect the branching strategy:

git ls-remote --heads origin develop

• Non-empty output → REQUIRED SUB-SKILL: Invoke branching-strategy:gitflow
• Empty output → REQUIRED SUB-SKILL: Invoke branching-strategy:trunk

The strategy skill determines the correct base branch. Use the base branch it provides:

git checkout <base-branch> && git pull origin <base-branch>
git checkout -b release/vX.Y.Z
git push -u origin release/vX.Y.Z

Report the branch name and detected strategy to the user before continuing.

Edge cases:

• Already on a branch named release/*: confirm with the user before creating a new one.
• Release branch already exists remotely: ask whether to reuse it or create a new version.

Step 3 — Wait for CI to pass

REQUIRED SUB-SKILL: Invoke monitor-pipeline with args: "watch branch release/vX.Y.Z"

• If monitor-pipeline reports success: proceed to step 4.
• If monitor-pipeline reports failure: tell the user which step failed, suggest pushing fixes to release/vX.Y.Z and re-running this skill from step 3, and stop.

Step 4 — Open the release PR

Resolve the default branch (production target for release PRs in both GitFlow and trunk-based strategies):

gh repo view --json defaultBranchRef --jq '.defaultBranchRef.name'

REQUIRED SUB-SKILL: Invoke github-pr with args: "open a release PR from release/vX.Y.Z into <default-branch>. Title: 'release: vX.Y.Z'. The PR merges the release branch into <default-branch> for the vX.Y.Z release."

Step 5 — Report completion

Tell the user:

• The PR URL
• That the vX.Y.Z tag will be applied by the CI/CD pipeline after the PR is merged
• Next action: review and merge the PR

Using This Skill From Other Skills

When a skill needs to trigger a full release as part of a larger workflow, add this to the calling skill's SKILL.md:

**REQUIRED SUB-SKILL:** Invoke `create-release` to cut the release branch, wait for CI,
and open the release PR. The PR URL and version will be available in conversation.