Kortix Release

Kortix Release

How a clean, accurate production release happens. Two halves: what version (the bump philosophy) and how (notes derived from the real staging candidate, then promote → deploy → verify). The release notes you write become the GitHub Release, which is exactly what the public /changelog page renders — so they must reflect what actually shipped, nothing invented, nothing missed.

Pairs with kortix-voice (how the notes read). The version source of truth is the root VERSION file; vX.Y.Z tags are immutable and map 1:1 to a commit + image.

0. Golden rule — prod ships ONLY from staging

The only normal way to change prod is: get the release candidate onto staging, then run Promote to Production (staging → reviewed release PR → prod). Never git push …:prod, never open a manual PR into prod, never cherry-pick onto prod.

main is dev. It can move fast and can temporarily be broken. staging is the production candidate branch: only promote a dev ref to staging when it is ready to ship, or open a targeted PR directly into staging for a specific release candidate/hotfix. Production promotion always reads from staging.

1. Versioning philosophy — what bump?

Semver MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH. Default to patch. When unsure, patch.

• Patch (1.0.0 → 1.0.1) — the everyday release. Bug fixes, small features, copy, docs, infra, polish. This is most releases. Ship often; keep them small.
• Minor (1.0.x → 1.1.0) — a milestone worth signposting: a meaningful batch of new user-facing capability. Use sparingly, when a release is genuinely "a thing."
• Major (1.x → 2.0.0) — a breaking change or an architecture shift (the kind of jump v0.x → 1.0 was). Rare.

If the change set is "fixes + a couple small features" → patch. Don't inflate.

2. The flow (do this every time)

Releases run off the staging branch. main is only the dev trunk.

Step 1 — find the last released version

cd suna
git fetch origin --tags --quiet
PREV="$(git tag -l 'v[0-9]*.[0-9]*.[0-9]*' --sort=-v:refname | head -1)"   # e.g. v0.9.6
echo "last release: $PREV  | staging: $(git rev-parse --short origin/staging) | prod VERSION: $(git show origin/prod:VERSION)"

Step 2 — read EVERY commit since that release (this is the source of truth)

git log "$PREV..origin/staging" --no-merges --pretty='- %s (%h)'

This complete list is the raw material for the notes. Skim full bodies for anything non-obvious: git log "$PREV..origin/staging" --no-merges. Also useful for scope: git diff --stat "$PREV..origin/staging".

The notes must account for all of these commits — that's the whole point. Don't summarize from memory; summarize from this log. Nothing invented, nothing dropped.

Step 3 — write the title + notes FROM that log

• title — one human line capturing the theme (sentence case, plain, outcome-first). e.g. "Warm pool, billing fixes, and a faster session boot".
• notes — a readable, grouped summary of what's in the log. Lead with user-facing changes; fold internal/infra commits into plain outcomes. Markdown bullets. Follow kortix-voice: plain language, no hype/banned words, say "open source" and never name a license (see the comms skill). Group loosely (e.g. new / improved / fixed) when there's enough to group.

Quality bar: a non-technical reader understands what changed; a teammate can map every notable commit in the log to a line in the notes.

Step 3.5 — staging must be live and green

Before promoting, verify the selected staging SHA is the live staging runtime:

curl -fsS https://staging-api.kortix.com/v1/health | jq '{environment,version,commit}'
curl -fsS https://staging.kortix.com/api/runtime-config | grep 'staging-api.kortix.com'
gh run list --repo kortix-ai/suna --branch staging --limit 10

qa-staging must target staging.kortix.com / staging-api.kortix.com. A green run against dev is not a staging gate.

Step 3.6 — cost the pending PROD migrations

Diff prod's kortix_migrations.pgmigrations against the promoted tree and cost every pending migration at prod data volume (a tag tree containing a file is NOT proof it ran — only the ledger is):

psql "$(aws secretsmanager get-secret-value --secret-id kortix-prod-env \
  --query SecretString --output text | jq -r .DATABASE_URL)" \
  -Atc "select name from kortix_migrations.pgmigrations order by id desc limit 5;"

Anything that rewrites a large hot table runs as a supervised batched out-of-band pass BEFORE the deploy. Full rule + the worked pattern: the learnings skill ("Never backfill data inside a single-transaction migration" / "Cost every pending prod migration", 2026-08-10 v0.12.7 outage).

Step 4 — run Promote to Production

promote.yml requires title and notes (this is enforced — you cannot cut a release without describing it). They're written into the annotated tag (subject = title, body = notes), which deploy-prod turns into the GitHub Release + changelog.

gh workflow run promote.yml --repo kortix-ai/suna --ref staging \
  -f title="<title>" -f notes="$(cat <<'EOF'
<markdown notes>
EOF
)" -f bump=patch

Use -f version=X.Y.Z instead of -f bump= only for an explicit version (e.g. the first 1.0.0). Watch it: gh run watch <id> --exit-status. It opens a review-gated release/vX.Y.Z PR into prod with the version, notes, release source SHA, and prod GitOps image pins. Production does not move until that PR is merged.

Step 5 — make sure the staging images for this commit are built

deploy-prod retags the exact staging images. It does NOT rebuild. So the staging build for the promoted commit must be green first:

gh run list --repo kortix-ai/suna --workflow build-staging.yml --branch staging --limit 3 \
  --json status,conclusion,headSha

Step 6 — merge the release PR, then verify

After the release PR merges to prod, deploy-prod.yml retags staging images to :X.Y.Z + :latest, runs prod migrations, rolls ECS Fargate (infra/scripts/ecs-deploy.sh for api + gateway), cuts the GitHub Release, and Vercel deploys prod to kortix.com.

gh run list --repo kortix-ai/suna --workflow deploy-prod.yml --limit 1
curl -fsS https://api.kortix.com/v1/health | jq '{environment,version,commit}'
gh release view "vX.Y.Z" --repo kortix-ai/suna --json name,body   # title + notes present

3. Gotchas (hard-won)

• deploy-prod concurrency = cancel-in-progress: false. A slow desktop build or a zombie queued run blocks the next deploy — cancel it first.
• Don't promote a moving staging. If commits are still landing, wait until staging deploy + QA settles, then promote that exact HEAD.
• Staging is not dev. If staging.kortix.com/api/runtime-config references dev-api.kortix.com, stop and fix staging before releasing.
• The /changelog page shows only ≥ 1.0.0 and reads GitHub Release bodies — so a thin/auto-generated body shows up as a thin entry. Write real notes (Step 3).
• VERSION is the source of truth; the version field in /v1/health is stamped by deploy-prod's task-def, not baked into the image.

4. Undo a bad / premature release

If a release was cut by mistake (and not yet truly published — i.e. no ECS roll / no real Release), remove it cleanly. main is protected from force-push, so revert there.

git push origin :refs/tags/vX.Y.Z                       # delete the tag
git push -f origin <prev-release-sha>:refs/heads/prod    # reset prod to the prior release
git revert --no-edit <version-bump-commit>               # put main VERSION back; then push
gh release delete vX.Y.Z --repo kortix-ai/suna           # only if a Release was actually cut
# cancel any deploy-prod the prod reset triggered

Verify: tag gone, prod VERSION = prior, main VERSION = prior, api-prod unchanged, no vX.Y.Z Release.

Note: prod branch protection is allow_force_pushes:false + enforce_admins:true, so the git push -f …:refs/heads/prod above only works if protection is temporarily relaxed. For a release that's ALREADY LIVE, do NOT force-push — use §5.

5. Roll back a LIVE release (prod is already serving it)

When a shipped version is broken and you need prod on an OLDER already-released version NOW, do not force-push prod and do not reverse migrations. Use the rollback-prod.yml workflow — the inverse of promote (forward → back), reusing the target's prebuilt images (zero rebuild):

gh workflow run rollback-prod.yml --repo kortix-ai/suna --ref main \
  -f version=vX.Y.Z -f reason="<incident summary>" -f confirm="ROLLBACK PROD"

It re-tags the prebuilt, immutable :vX.Y.Z API and gateway images as :latest and runs infra/scripts/ecs-deploy.sh for both services — one dispatch, no PR, no GitOps step. Full mechanics and the Vercel clobber trap: the kortix-rollback skill. Then:

• Frontend: Vercel → kortix.com → Deployments → the vX.Y.Z prod deployment → Instant Rollback (do this AFTER the merge so the Vercel rebuild can't clobber it).
• DB: left as-is. Forward-only migrations are additive, so the live schema is a superset of any older release — older code runs fine; reversing migrations is unsafe.
• VERSION stays at the current prod number so deploy-prod's retag can't overwrite the :X.Y.Z rollback image. A deploy-prod run may go partly red (version-watch / release-create) — cosmetic; ECS does the real roll.

The next promote of staging supersedes the rollback cleanly (merge -s ours) and moves prod forward — i.e. "fix forward" just works again.

Checklist

1. git log $PREV..origin/staging read in full — notes account for all of it.
2. Bump chosen per §1 (default patch).
3. title + notes written in kortix-voice, accurate to the log.
4. staging.kortix.com and staging-api.kortix.com verified on the staging SHA.
5. promote.yml run with title + notes; release PR merged into prod.
6. deploy-prod ran, ECS services green, api.kortix.com on the new version.
7. GitHub Release shows the title + notes → /changelog reads cleanly.