release-process

A release checklist for the Squad project, covering version checks, package publishing, changelog validation, tokens, and GitHub release steps. It focuses on avoiding mistakes that can leave users with a broken or incorrectly tagged package.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to validate a release version, check package and changelog state, prepare publishing credentials, and confirm GitHub release and package-manager steps.
Why use it?
It catches release configuration and versioning problems before publishing. The checklist records lessons from earlier failed releases and requires validation before release work begins.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/bradygaster/squad/release-process
Any agent
npx skills add bradygaster/squad --skill release-process
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/bradygaster/squad

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 27 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 5,247 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan C 1 finding. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00027 $0.05247
Opus 5 $0.00014 $0.02624
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.01049
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00525

Measured yesterday against content hash 6ab7149444ec, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

release-process scanned grade C with 1 finding against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Recursive force deletehighDestructive command

rm -rf with a variable or a broad path is one typo away from removing the wrong tree.

rm -rf /tmp/squad-release-test
.copilot/skills/release-process/SKILL.md · 550 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 550 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Context

This is the definitive release runbook for Squad. Born from the v0.8.22 release disaster (4-part semver mangled by npm, draft release never triggered publish, wrong NPM_TOKEN type, 6+ hours of broken latest dist-tag) and hardened by v0.9.4 lessons (root package.json drift, CHANGELOG validation, GITHUB_TOKEN propagation limitation — PRs #1042, #1043, #1044).

See also: .squad/skills/release-process/SKILL.md for the team-level skill with full incident history.

Rule: No agent releases Squad without following this checklist. No exceptions. No improvisation.


Pre-Release Validation

Before starting ANY release work, validate the following:

1. Version Number Validation

Rule: Only 3-part semver (major.minor.patch) or prerelease (major.minor.patch-tag.N) are valid. 4-part versions (0.8.21.4) are NOT valid semver and npm will mangle them.

# Check version is valid semver
node -p "require('semver').valid('0.8.22')"
# Output: '0.8.22' = valid
# Output: null = INVALID, STOP

# For prerelease versions
node -p "require('semver').valid('0.8.23-preview.1')"
# Output: '0.8.23-preview.1' = valid

If semver.valid() returns null: STOP. Fix the version. Do NOT proceed.

2. NPM_TOKEN Verification

Rule: NPM_TOKEN must be an Automation token (no 2FA required). User tokens with 2FA will fail in CI with EOTP errors.

# Check token type (requires npm CLI authenticated)
npm token list

Look for:

  • read-write tokens with NO 2FA requirement = Automation token (correct)
  • ❌ Tokens requiring OTP = User token (WRONG, will fail in CI)

How to create an Automation token:

  1. Go to npmjs.com → Settings → Access Tokens
  2. Click "Generate New Token"
  3. Select "Automation" (NOT "Publish")
  4. Copy token and save as GitHub secret: NPM_TOKEN

If using a User token: STOP. Create an Automation token first.

3. Branch and Tag State

Rule: Release from main branch. Ensure clean state, no uncommitted changes, latest from origin.

Read the full file on GitHub · 550 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 550 lines · 27 tokens per session scan C 6ab7149444ec

Subscribe to this mod's changes

release-process is a skill published in the GitHub repository bradygaster/squad (3,140 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 27 tokens to every session and 5,247 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it C with 1 finding (recursive force delete). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.