release

A set of rules and guidance for managing software releases, including version numbers, release notes, publishing, and release checklists. Semantic Versioning is a convention where version changes show whether changes break users, add features, or fix bugs.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when planning a release, updating a version, writing release notes, publishing a package, or setting up release automation.
Why use it?
It gives the project a consistent way to decide version numbers and prepare releases. This makes changes easier for users and maintainers to understand.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the sdlc plugin — 10 skills, 5 commands, 4 agents, 1 hook shipped together

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/zircote-plugins/sdlc-quality/release
Any agent
npx skills add zircote-plugins/sdlc-quality --skill release
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/zircote-plugins/sdlc-quality

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install sdlc, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 10 skills, 5 commands, 4 agents, 1 hook.

Per session 63 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,647 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. 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 $0.00063 $0.01647
Opus 5 $0.00032 $0.00823
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.00329
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00165

Measured 3d ago against content hash be66b052b814, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

release scanned grade A with 0 findings 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 3d ago.

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.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.github/skills/release/SKILL.md · 283 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 283 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Release Management Standards

Guidance for implementing release requirements including versioning, automation, and publishing workflows.

Tooling

Available Tools: If using Claude Code, the agents:release skill can prepare and execute releases with version bumps and validation. The documentation-review:changelog skill manages changelog entries.

Versioning Requirements

Semantic Versioning (MUST)

Projects MUST follow Semantic Versioning (SemVer):

MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH[-PRERELEASE][+BUILD]
Component When to Increment
MAJOR Breaking API changes
MINOR New backwards-compatible features
PATCH Backwards-compatible bug fixes
PRERELEASE Pre-release versions (alpha, beta, rc)
BUILD Build metadata (ignored for precedence)

Version Examples

1.0.0         # Initial release
1.0.1         # Patch release (bug fix)
1.1.0         # Minor release (new feature)
2.0.0         # Major release (breaking change)
2.0.0-alpha.1 # Pre-release
2.0.0-rc.1    # Release candidate
2.0.0+build.123 # With build metadata

Pre-release Versions (MUST)

Pre-release versions MUST follow this progression:

  1. x.y.z-alpha.N - Early testing, unstable
  2. x.y.z-beta.N - Feature complete, testing
  3. x.y.z-rc.N - Release candidate, final testing

Release Process

Pre-Release Checklist (MUST)

Before releasing, verify:

Check Requirement
All tests pass MUST
No security vulnerabilities MUST
Documentation updated MUST
CHANGELOG updated MUST
Version bumped MUST
Breaking changes documented MUST (if applicable)
Migration guide provided SHOULD (for major versions)

Read the full file on GitHub · 283 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. 3d ago First seen · 283 lines · 63 tokens per session scan A be66b052b814

Subscribe to this mod's changes

release is a skill published in the GitHub repository zircote-plugins/sdlc-quality (10 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 63 tokens to every session and 1,647 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

cut-release

Cut a clean release — bump versions across all files, update changelog, create GitHub release.

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ship

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Cut a brooks-lint release: set the version in package.json, propagate it across all four plugin manifests and every version-bearing text file (README badges, docs site metadata), write the CHANGELOG entry, validate, then commit, push, tag, and publish the GitHub release. Triggers when the maintainer asks to "release"…

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common-store-changelog

Generate user-facing release notes for the App Store and Google Play from git history (App Store <=4000 chars, Google Play <=500). Use when generating release notes, app store changelog, play store release, or "what's new" text for a mobile app.

HoangNguyen0403/agent-skills-standard · 60 tokens

release-habit-hooks

Cut a new release of the habit-hooks packages. Use when asked to release, publish, or bump the version. Reviews what lands, enforces the in-sync versioning rule, validates the changelog, and drives the tag-triggered PyPI publish.

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ring:generating-release-guides

Generating an internal Operations-facing update/migration guide from the git diff between two refs, documenting per-change client impact, deploy ordering, monitoring, and rollback notes in English, pt-br, or both. Use when preparing a version release or recording what changed for the Ops team. Runs read-only by…

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