slang-release-process - SKILL.md Agent Skill

name: slang-release-process description: Push a new Slang release. Triggers CI, determines the version from the sprint board, generates release notes, creates an annotated tag, and pushes it to upstream. allowed-tools: - Bash - Read - Grep - Glob

Slang Release Process

Prerequisites

GitHub CLI (gh): Install from https://cli.github.com
Token scopes: The gh token must include read:project (for querying sprint info from the project board). Run gh auth refresh --scopes read:project to add it.

Step 1: Trigger Release CI

Manually trigger the Release workflow on the master branch from: https://github.com/shader-slang/slang/actions/workflows/release.yml

Using GitHub CLI:

gh workflow run release.yml --ref master

The workflow takes approximately 30 minutes. Monitor it with:

gh run list --workflow=release.yml --limit 1 --json status,conclusion,databaseId

Wait until the run completes successfully before proceeding.

Step 2: Determine the Version

Tag nomenclature: vYYYY.N where YYYY is the year and N is the sprint number within that year.

Find the current sprint number from the project board: https://github.com/orgs/shader-slang/projects/10/views/23
Or query it programmatically (requires read:project scope):

gh api graphql -f query='{
  organization(login: "shader-slang") {
    projectV2(number: 10) {
      fields(first: 20) {
        nodes {
          ... on ProjectV2IterationField {
            name
            configuration {
              iterations { title startDate duration }
              completedIterations { title startDate duration }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}'

The first active iteration whose date range covers today is the current sprint.
Subtract the starting sprint of the year to get N. The first sprint of the year is the earliest one with a startDate in January of that year.
For 2026, sprint 45 was the first sprint (Jan 06), so N = current_sprint - 45.
Example: sprint 52 → 52 - 45 = 7 → version v2026.7

Hotfix nomenclature: vYYYY.N.H where H increments from 1. The next sprint release note continues from the latest hotfix, not the previous sprint release.

Respin nomenclature (rare): vYYYY.N.H.R where R is the respin number, for re-spinning an old release with minimal changes.

Step 3: Generate Release Notes

# Auto-detects previous release tag and generates notes
# Requires GitHub CLI (gh) for PR label lookup; takes ~1-2 minutes
bash docs/scripts/release-note.sh

The script prints breaking changes (PRs labeled "pr: breaking change") followed by all changes.

Step 4: Create and Push the Tag

Create an annotated tag on upstream/master with the release notes as the message:

# Make sure local master is up to date
git fetch upstream && git checkout master && git merge --ff-only upstream/master

# Create the annotated tag (paste the release-note.sh output as the message body)
git tag -a vYYYY.N -m "<tag message with release notes>"

# Push to upstream — this triggers the Release CI which creates the release packages
git push upstream vYYYY.N

The tag message format:

vYYYY.N

=== Breaking changes ===
<one-line git log entries for breaking PRs>

=== All changes for this release ===
<one-line git log entries for all PRs, with [BREAKING] prefix on breaking ones>

Interactive Workflow

Check prerequisites: verify gh is installed and has read:project scope (gh auth status)
Trigger the Release CI on master (gh workflow run release.yml --ref master)
Monitor the CI run until it passes (~30 minutes)
Query the project board to determine the current sprint and compute the version number
Run docs/scripts/release-note.sh to generate release notes
Create the annotated tag on upstream/master with the release notes
Push the tag to upstream to trigger release packaging
Verify the release CI was triggered for the new tag