Release Skill

Complete workflow for creating a new versioned release of vidpipe, including version bump, release notes, GitHub release, and npm publishing.

Prerequisites

• Clean working tree (git status shows no uncommitted changes)
• All tests passing (npm test)
• gh CLI authenticated (gh auth status)
• npm publish token available (see npm-publish skill)

Release Workflow

Step 1: Determine Version Bump

Check commits since the last tag to decide the bump type:

git log --oneline $(git describe --tags --abbrev=0)..HEAD

• patch (x.x.1): Only bug fixes (fix: commits)
• minor (x.1.0): New features (feat: commits), no breaking changes
• major (1.0.0): Breaking changes (BREAKING CHANGE or !: commits)

Step 2: Bump Version

npm version <patch|minor|major> --no-git-tag-version

This updates package.json and package-lock.json without creating a git tag (we'll do that manually after release notes).

Step 3: Build and Test

npm run build && npm test

All tests must pass before proceeding.

Step 4: Commit Version Bump

git add package.json package-lock.json
git commit -m "chore: bump version to <NEW_VERSION>"
git push origin main

Step 5: Create Git Tag

git tag -a v<NEW_VERSION> -m "v<NEW_VERSION>"
git push origin v<NEW_VERSION>

Step 6: Generate Release Notes

Write release notes that include:

• Features (feat: commits) — describe what's new with user-facing impact
• Bug Fixes (fix: commits) — describe what was broken and how it's fixed
• Documentation — notable doc improvements
• Internal — infrastructure, refactoring, DX improvements

Format as GitHub-flavored markdown with emoji section headers (✨ Features, 🐛 Fixes, 📖 Documentation, 🔧 Internal).

Include a changelog link at the bottom:

**Full Changelog**: https://github.com/htekdev/vidpipe/compare/vOLD...vNEW

Step 7: Create GitHub Release

gh release create v<NEW_VERSION> --title "v<NEW_VERSION> — <SHORT_DESCRIPTION>" --notes "<RELEASE_NOTES>"

Step 8: Publish to npm

Follow the npm-publish skill:

1. Set auth token: npm config set //registry.npmjs.org/:_authToken=<TOKEN>
2. Publish: npm publish --access public
3. Verify: npm view vidpipe version
4. Clean up: npm config delete //registry.npmjs.org/:_authToken

If no token is available, use Playwright to create one (see npm-publish skill).

Step 9: Verify

• GitHub release visible: gh release view v<NEW_VERSION>
• npm version matches: npm view vidpipe version

Important Notes

• Always push commits BEFORE creating the tag (tag should point to a pushed commit)
• Use --no-git-tag-version with npm version to separate the version bump commit from the tag
• Release notes should be written for END USERS, not developers
• The npm token (vidpipe-publish) expires every 90 days — check expiry if publish fails
• If npm registry shows old version after publish, wait 30-60 seconds for propagation