release-manager

Release Manager

The agent automates release management by parsing conventional commits into structured changelogs, determining semantic version bumps, and assessing release readiness with checklists, rollback runbooks, and stakeholder communication plans.

Quick Start

# Generate changelog from conventional commits
git log --oneline v1.0.0..HEAD | python changelog_generator.py --version 1.1.0 --format both

# Determine version bump from commit history
git log --oneline v1.0.0..HEAD | python version_bumper.py --current-version 1.0.0 --analysis

# Assess release readiness
python release_planner.py --input release-plan.json --include-checklist --include-rollback

Core Workflows

Workflow 1: Generate Changelog and Version Bump

1. Collect commits since last tag: git log --oneline v1.0.0..HEAD
2. Pipe to changelog_generator.py to produce a Keep-a-Changelog-format CHANGELOG
3. Pipe to version_bumper.py to determine MAJOR/MINOR/PATCH bump from commit types
4. Review changelog grouping (Added, Fixed, Changed, Breaking Changes)
5. Validation checkpoint: All feat commits appear under Added; all fix under Fixed; breaking changes highlighted

git log --oneline v1.2.0..HEAD | python changelog_generator.py \
  --version 1.3.0 --date 2026-03-21 --base-url https://github.com/org/repo --summary

Workflow 2: Assess Release Readiness

1. Prepare release plan JSON with features, quality gates, stakeholders, and target date
2. Run release_planner.py with checklist, communication, and rollback flags
3. Review blocking issues and readiness score
4. Address blockers (missing approvals, failed gates, overdue items)
5. Validation checkpoint: Readiness score >80%; zero blocking issues; rollback runbook generated with time estimates

python release_planner.py --input release-plan.json \
  --output-format json --include-checklist --include-communication --include-rollback

Workflow 3: Hotfix Release

1. Create hotfix branch from last stable tag
2. Apply minimal fix and run version_bumper.py with --prerelease rc
3. Generate changelog entry for the fix
4. Assess readiness with expedited checklist
5. Validation checkpoint: Fix addresses root cause only; rollback procedure tested; stakeholders notified

Version Bump Rules

| Commit Type | Bump | Example | |-------------|------|---------| | BREAKING CHANGE or ! suffix | MAJOR | feat!: remove deprecated API | | feat | MINOR | feat(auth): add OAuth2 | | fix, perf, security | PATCH | fix(api): resolve race condition | | docs, test, chore, ci | None | docs: update README |

Pre-release progression: alpha.N -> beta.1 -> rc.1 -> stable release.

Rollback Triggers

• Error rate: >2x baseline within 30 minutes
• Latency: >50% P95 increase
• Feature failures: Core functionality broken
• Security incident: Vulnerability exploited
• Data corruption: Database integrity compromised

Anti-Patterns

• Monolithic releases -- large, infrequent releases with high blast radius; prefer small, frequent releases
• Manual deployments -- error-prone and inconsistent; automate every step that can be automated
• No rollback plan -- every release must have a tested rollback procedure before going live
• Skipping quality gates -- deploying without test coverage, security scan, or dependency audit
• Last-minute changes -- code freeze exists for a reason; changes after freeze need explicit approval
• Non-conventional commits -- free-form commit messages break changelog generation and version bumping
• Environment drift -- staging must mirror production; drift causes false confidence in testing

Troubleshooting

| Problem | Cause | Solution | |---------|-------|----------| | Changelog generator produces empty output | Non-conventional commit messages that don't match the type(scope): description pattern | Ensure all commits follow conventional commit format; non-matching messages default to chore type which is excluded from user-facing changelogs | | Version bumper recommends none despite meaningful commits | Commits use types in the ignore list (test, ci, build, chore, docs, style) | Use feat for new features and fix for bug fixes; override with --custom-rules to map additional types to bump levels | | Release planner reports blocked status unexpectedly | Missing required approvals (pm_approved, qa_approved) on features or failed required quality gates | Review the blocking_issues array in the assessment output; ensure all features have the necessary approval flags set to true in the input JSON | | Pre-release version not incrementing correctly | Existing pre-release type does not match the requested --prerelease type, causing a reset to .1 | When promoting from alpha to beta or beta to rc, the counter resets to 1 by design; to stay on the same track, pass the same pre-release type | | Git log parsing misses commits | Input uses full git log format but lines are not properly indented with 4 spaces | Use git log --oneline for the simplest input format, or ensure the full format output preserves the standard 4-space commit message indent | | Readiness score seems too low | Quality gates default to pending status when not explicitly set, and pending gates score zero points | Provide explicit quality_gates with accurate status values in the release plan JSON, or complete the gates before running assessment | | Rollback time estimate is inaccurate | Default rollback steps use generic time estimates that don't reflect your infrastructure | Supply custom rollback_steps in the release plan JSON with estimated_time values that match your actual deployment environment |

Success Criteria

• Changelog accuracy: 100% of conventional commits are correctly categorized (feat to Added, fix to Fixed, etc.) with zero miscategorized entries
• Version bump correctness: Recommended version matches SemVer rules in all cases -- breaking changes produce MAJOR, features produce MINOR, fixes produce PATCH
• Readiness assessment coverage: All blocking issues (missing approvals, failed quality gates, overdue timelines) are surfaced with zero false negatives
• Release cycle time reduction: Teams using the planner reduce release preparation time by 40% or more compared to manual checklist tracking
• Rollback preparedness: Every release assessed by the planner has a complete, actionable rollback runbook with time estimates and verification steps
• Stakeholder communication: Communication plans cover all identified stakeholders with appropriate timing (T-48h external, T-24h internal, T+1h post-deploy)
• Tool integration time: New teams can configure and run all three scripts against their repository within 30 minutes of initial setup

Scope & Limitations

This skill covers:

• Parsing conventional commits and generating structured changelogs in Markdown and JSON formats
• Determining semantic version bumps (major/minor/patch) with pre-release support (alpha, beta, rc)
• Assessing release readiness across features, quality gates, approvals, and timelines
• Generating rollback runbooks, communication plans, and release checklists from structured input

This skill does NOT cover:

• Actual CI/CD pipeline execution or deployment automation (see engineering/ci-cd-pipeline-generator)
• Live monitoring, alerting, or incident response during deployments (see engineering/monitoring-alerting-setup)
• Code review processes or pull request management (see engineering/code-review-automation)
• Infrastructure provisioning, container orchestration, or environment management (see engineering/infrastructure-as-code)

Integration Points

| Skill | Integration | Data Flow | |-------|-------------|-----------| | engineering/ci-cd-pipeline-generator | Embed changelog generation and version bumping as pipeline stage