Nexus Release

Context: a Nexus release is one artifact — a bare X.Y.Z git tag on main. Everything downstream (installing, building, naming the release, uploading main.js / manifest.json / styles.css, provenance attestation) is done by <repo>/.github/workflows/release.yml from the tagged commit. You never build the release; you make the tagged commit correct and then tag it.

Two consequences shape everything here. The tag is the point of no return — the workflow reads the tree as committed at that tag. And the workflow guards only three things, so everything else is on you.

Path convention: <repo>/… means relative to the Nexus repo root. Bare paths (protocols/…, scripts/…) are inside this skill.

Workflow

1. Cutting a release → follow protocols/cut-release.md end to end, in order. Do not improvise the sequence: several steps only have any effect before the tag exists.

2. Bringing user-facing docs in line (a phase of the above; also runnable on its own) → protocols/doc-review.md.

3. Before pushing any tag you MUST get a clean exit from the readiness check. It reproduces the workflow's own version guard locally, so a failure here is a failure you would otherwise discover after the tag exists:

   python3 .claude/skills/nexus-release/scripts/check_release_ready.py --tag X.Y.Z
   

   (--repo defaults to the repo root found by walking up from the working directory. Run --help for the flags; stdlib only, no node_modules. If the mirror above is absent, the same file is at <repo>/.skills/nexus-release/scripts/check_release_ready.py.)

4. The workflow did not run, failed its guard, or shipped the wrong assets → protocols/recover.md. NEVER hand-create a release or hand-attach assets to fix it — that silently drops provenance attestation.

5. After a release session → protocols/self-refine.md.

Map

• protocols/ the how: cut-release.md, doc-review.md, recover.md, self-refine.md.
• references/ the why, read on demand: release-machinery.md (what the workflow really does, what it guards, what it does not, and the build-order asymmetry that decides which generated file can ship stale), changelog-format.md (the conventions the changelog actually follows).
• scripts/ check_release_ready.py — version consistency across package.json, manifest.json, versions.json, the lockfile and the tag.
• refinement-log.md — what past releases taught this skill.

Siblings

Do not duplicate these; call them.

Need	Skill
Regenerate the tool catalog a release must ship current	nexus-tool-schemas
Choose a Jest lane, or debug a failing guidance/drift test	nexus-testing
Provider/model metadata that a release happens to include	nexus-model-updates
Mobile or plugin-store compliance of what is being shipped	nexus-mobile-compat

Editing this skill

<repo>/.skills/ is the source of truth for this skill; .claude/skills/, .codex/skills/ and .cline/skills/ are mirrors written by npm run sync:skills. Edit the copy under <repo>/.skills/nexus-release/ and re-run the sync. The mirror copy overwrites changed files but does not delete extra ones, so editing a mirror leaves a half-reverted hybrid on the next sync.