Skillmaker Dev Release

Releasing skillmaker-studio

The release is tag-driven: pushing a v* tag runs .github/workflows/release.yml, which builds platform binaries, attaches tarballs to a GitHub Release, and publishes the npm packages. Your job is to (1) land a version-bump PR on main, (2) tag the merged commit, (3) watch the run, (4) verify npm.

Preconditions

• Clean main, CI green on the tip you intend to release.
• The six-or-so PRs you mean to ship are already merged to main.
• You can push tags to the repo and gh is authenticated.
• npm publishing uses trusted publishing (OIDC) as of v0.5.0: each package (skillmaker-studio, @skillmaker/cli-darwin-arm64, @skillmaker/cli-darwin-x64, @skillmaker/cli-linux-x64, @skillmaker/cli-win32-x64) has this repo + release.yml registered as a trusted publisher on npmjs.com, and publish-npm carries id-token: write. No NPM_TOKEN secret exists or is needed. A NEW package needs its trusted publisher registered before its first tag run (registration: npmjs.com > @skillmaker org > package > Settings > Publishing access > Trusted publisher > GitHub Actions, with repo sociotechnica-org/skillmaker-studio, workflow release.yml, no environment). @skillmaker/cli-win32-x64 and @skillmaker/cli-darwin-x64 were added after v0.5.0 -- their first successful publish requires this one-time registration; until then the workflow's final "Publish NEW platform packages" step fails 404/403 while the established three still publish fine. If npm won't let you register a trusted publisher for a package that doesn't exist yet, do the first publish manually from the run's npm-packages artifact (cd into each package dir, npm publish --access public), then register.

Version touchpoints

There is exactly one tracked file to bump: the root package.json "version" field. Everything else derives:

• dist/VERSION — written by scripts/build-dist.sh as <root package.json version>+<git sha>; names the release tarballs (skillmaker-<version>-<os>-<arch>.tar.gz).
• npm/skillmaker-studio/package.json and the four npm/cli-<platform>-<arch>/package.json templates (darwin-arm64, darwin-x64, linux-x64, win32-x64) — tracked templates that stay "0.0.0". Do NOT bump them. scripts/build-npm-packages.sh stamps the real version (and the wrapper's optionalDependencies pins) at build time from the tag (${GITHUB_REF_NAME#v}).
• packages/*/package.json — workspace-internal, all "0.0.0", never bumped.

Invariant: the root package.json version must equal the tag's bare version. The tarball names come from package.json; the npm versions come from the tag. If they disagree, the GitHub Release and npm disagree.

Steps

1. Bump + PR. On a branch (e.g. release/vX.Y.Z), set root package.json "version" to X.Y.Z. Open a PR, wait for CI (gh pr checks --watch), squash-merge.

2. Tag the merged commit. Fetch main and tag exactly the merge commit:

   git fetch origin main
   git tag vX.Y.Z <merged-sha>   # or FETCH_HEAD after verifying it's the merge
   git push origin vX.Y.Z
   

   The workflow triggers on push: tags: ["v*"] only. There is no workflow_dispatch — a tag push is the only door.

3. Watch. gh run list --workflow release.yml for the run on the tag, then gh run watch <run-id> --exit-status.

4. Verify (npm propagation can lag a minute or two — retry, don't panic):

   npm view skillmaker-studio version         # expect X.Y.Z
   npm view @skillmaker/cli-darwin-arm64 version
   npm view @skillmaker/cli-darwin-x64 version
   npm view @skillmaker/cli-linux-x64 version
   npm view @skillmaker/cli-win32-x64 version
   npx -y skillmaker-studio@X.Y.Z --help      # smoke: wrapper resolves + spawns the binary
   

What the workflow does (in order)

1. build (ubuntu-latest, single job): ./scripts/build-dist.sh --all cross-compiles the binary for all four platforms (bun build --compile --target=bun-<platform> — no per-platform runners), archives each platform's skillmaker[.exe] + viewer-dist/ + VERSION (.tar.gz for the unix targets, .zip for win32-x64), then ./scripts/build-npm-packages.sh --all "${GITHUB_REF_NAME#v}" assembles all four @skillmaker/cli-<platform>-<arch> packages plus the skillmaker-studio wrapper. npm packages ride as one tarball (npm-packages.tar.gz) to preserve the executable bit through upload-artifact's zip hop.
2. publish-release: downloads the release archives and creates the GitHub Release with generated notes.
3. publish-npm (OIDC): extracts the npm tarball and publishes in two steps — first the established @skillmaker/cli-darwin-arm64, @skillmaker/cli-linux-x64, skillmaker-studio; then, in a separate final step, the newer @skillmaker/cli-darwin-x64 and @skillmaker/cli-win32-x64 (so a missing trusted-publisher registration fails loudly without blocking the established three) — each via (cd "$dir" && npm publish --access public).

Not published by the workflow: @skillmaker/cli (claimed 2026-07-20 as a v0.0.1 placeholder per the install-simplification proposal; it stays a placeholder unless the launcher moves there).

Failure modes (learned the hard way)

• #124 — the version bump is a separate, mandatory first step. v0.3.0 needed a dedicated bump commit because nothing else moves the root version. Tagging without it ships tarballs named for the old version.

• #125 — npm publish pkgs/name does not publish a directory. A bare pkgs/skillmaker-studio argument matches npm's GitHub owner/repo shorthand and is resolved as a git spec. v0.3.0's publish-npm failed exactly this way. The workflow now cds into each package dir; keep it that way.

• Re-running a failed tag run cannot pick up a workflow fix. The run executes the workflow file at the tag's commit. v0.3.0's attempt 2 failed identically even after #125 merged to main, because the tag still pointed at the pre-fix commit. Recovery options: publish manually from the run's npm artifacts (what actually shipped 0.3.0 to npm, ~01:52 that night), or delete and re-push the tag onto a commit that contains the fix (npm versions are immutable — a partial publish means the re-run's npm publish of an already-published package will 403/EPUBLISHCONFLICT).

• v0.4.0 — npm publish E404 on PUT means the token can't write the scope, not that the package is missing. The v0.4.0 run's publish-npm failed with 404 Not Found - PUT https://registry.npmjs.org/@skillmaker%2fcli-darwin-arm64 even though that package exists at 0.3.0. npm answers 404 (not 403) when the auth token lacks access to a scoped package, to avoid leaking existence. Root cause context: v0.3.0's npm packages were published manually (the tag run died on #125 before reaching npm), so NPM_TOKEN had never actually been proven against the @skillmaker org — its first real use was this failure. Fix is outside the repo: grant the token publish access to the @skillmaker scope (or rotate to an automation token that has it), then recover via manual publish from the run's npm-* artifacts or a tag re-push. Until a tag run has published cleanly end-to-end, treat the token as unverified — consider an npm whoami/dry-run check before tagging.

• Release-tarball names carry build metadata. dist/VERSION is <version>+<sha>, and the tarball step uses it wholesale, so GitHub Release assets are named like skillmaker-0.4.0+cf95e0b-darwin-arm64.tar.gz. Cosmetic, but expect it when scripting downloads.

• npm view lag. Freshly published versions can take a minute or two to appear; retry before concluding the publish failed.

• v0.5.0 attempt 1 — EOTP means the package demands interactive 2FA for publishes. With a valid, correctly-scoped token, npm publish still failed EOTP because the packages' publishing access required two-factor with no automation-token exception. The token era ended here: rather than flipping the per-package setting, v0.5.0 moved to trusted publishing (OIDC) — npm's own direction, since granular tokens lose direct publish ~Jan 2027 (npm changelog 2026-07-08).

• Workflow fixes require a re-tag, and re-tagging is safe when npm is clean. Exercised at v0.5.0: the tag pointed at a pre-OIDC commit, so the release + tag were deleted (gh release delete --cleanup-tag), the tag re-pushed onto the commit carrying the workflow fix, and the fresh run went green end-to-end. Safe because nothing had published to npm at that version; with a partial publish, expect EPUBLISHCONFLICT instead.

Verified vs. inferred

Verified by execution or direct observation: the tag-only trigger, the single version touchpoint, the bump-PR → merge → tag-the-merge-commit flow (v0.4.0, run 29927633785), the #125 failure and its fix (the cd'd publish loop ran and reached npm at v0.4.0), the E404 scope-access failure, the failed-attempt-2 behavior and manual-publish recovery of v0.3.0 (run 29789655443), the +sha asset naming, npm state before/after.

Verified at v0.5.0 (run 30152656666, 2026-07-25): the first fully green publish-npm end-to-end — via OIDC trusted publishing, no secret — plus the npx smoke test against the CI-published version, and the delete-release/re-tag recovery path.

Still inferred, not exercised: EPUBLISHCONFLICT on partial-publish recovery, and the install.sh fallback path (frozen by design; not part of this workflow).