project-release

Project Release

Release workflow for monorepo projects that deploy via push-to-main (Railway, Vercel, Render, Fly.io, etc). Handles quality gates, version bump, changelog generation, git tagging, and push.

Unlike /release-maintenance (which publishes npm packages to a registry), this skill deploys apps — web frontends, API servers, background workers, mobile OTA updates.

Usage

/project-release                     # Full release (auto-detect changes)
/project-release patch               # Force patch bump
/project-release minor               # Force minor bump
/project-release major               # Force major bump (requires confirmation)
/project-release --dry-run           # Show what would happen without executing
/project-release --hotfix "desc"     # Minimal release: skip changelog, fast-track

Parse Arguments

Extract from: {{ARGUMENTS}}

If ARGS is empty            → MODE = auto (detect bump from commits)
If ARGS is patch|minor|major → MODE = forced bump
If ARGS has --dry-run       → MODE = dry-run
If ARGS has --hotfix        → MODE = hotfix

---

Pipeline Overview

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  1. PRE-FLIGHT          Gather state, detect changes            │
│  2. QUALITY GATES       type-check, lint, tests                 │
│  3. VERSION BUMP        Determine + apply new version           │
│  4. CHANGELOG           Generate from conventional commits      │
│  5. COMMIT + TAG        Atomic release commit with tag          │
│  6. PUSH                Triggers deployment automatically       │
│  7. VERIFY              Monitor deployment health               │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

---

Step 1: PRE-FLIGHT — Gather State

Run these in parallel to build a complete picture:

# Current version
cat package.json | grep '"version"'

# Last release tag
git tag -l 'v*' --sort=-version:refname | head -1

# Commits since last tag (or all if no tags)
git log $(git tag -l 'v*' --sort=-version:refname | head -1)..HEAD --oneline 2>/dev/null \
  || git log --oneline -30

# Working tree status
git status --short

# Branch check
git branch --show-current