Git release

Prepare exactly one release handoff. The agent may inspect and validate, but it must not create the tag, push, publish the release, change branches, commit, stage, merge, rebase, reset, delete tags, force-push, or push normal commits.

Accepted input

Accept no argument, patch, minor, major, or one explicit SemVer tag in the form vMAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, with an optional prerelease or build suffix, optionally with --draft. Reject other input. Treat a prerelease suffix and draft status as intentional only when explicitly supplied, and pass --prerelease for an explicitly supplied prerelease.

With patch, minor, major, or no argument, derive the next stable version from the highest reachable exact vMAJOR.MINOR.PATCH tag. If none exists, recommend v1.0.0 and require it in the preview. Validate explicit versions, and check the proposed tag locally, remotely, and in GitHub before continuing.

Read preflight-and-notes.md for the complete input, preflight, version-selection, validation, release-notes, and approval contract.

Read-only preflight

Before drafting the preview:

1. Inspect the current branch, regular and push origin URLs, and normalize them to one supported GitHub host/repository. Reject ambiguity, mismatch, userinfo in HTTPS URLs, unsupported hosts, or multiple push destinations.
2. Verify gh exists, authentication succeeds for that host, and GH_REPO=<host>/<owner>/<repo> gh repo view matches the remote.
3. Require a regular checkout, clean worktree, origin upstream, and HEAD exactly equal to the refreshed upstream tip. Release the primary branch by default; use another branch only when the user explicitly named it.
4. Inspect reachable tags and GitHub releases. Distinguish absence from an inspection failure. Refuse any existing local, remote, or GitHub release for the proposed version.
5. Discover and run the repository's authoritative validation command. Stop on failure.

Never infer a provider, repository, version baseline, or branch from ambiguous evidence. Do not invoke github-cli-workflow as a release workflow.

Notes and approval

Draft concise notes from the correct tag baseline using verified repository evidence only. Show the complete preview: repository, branch, expected SHA, exact URLs, previous/proposed version, validation result, title, full notes, and the exact user-run mutations. Ask for approval of that exact preview and stop until approval is explicit.

Handoff

After approval, read references/handoff.md, generate the private release artifacts through Git metadata, and report their absolute paths and the exact user command. Do not write release notes into the working tree or leave a local tag. Validate the generated script with bash -n and report the handoff as incomplete until the user runs it.

Stop conditions

Stop on dirty state, branch/upstream drift, remote changes, tag or release collision, missing authentication, validation failure, unsupported URL, linked worktree, changed approved notes, or any uncertain inspection. Report the blocking evidence and the next user action.