# AGENTS.md — cmd/release

**The release tool: publishes a Gitea release for this repository, from this
repository's own code.** Driven by `make release TAG=v1.2.3`, never by a user.

| file | what is in it |
|---|---|
| `main.go` | flags, argument validation, exit codes — everything that can fail before a socket is opened |
| `publish.go` | `spec`, `receipt`, its own small SDK `client`, and the converge/upload logic |
| `release_test.go` | the whole tool against a fake Gitea, including every refusal |

## Why it is not a `kettle` subcommand

`kettle`'s command tree is not just a menu: it is what `kettle gen skills`
generates the plugin's SKILL.md files from. A verb added there arrives in the
documentation an agent loads and in the reference an operator reads, and **"publish
a release" is not something either of them does.** Publishing is build
infrastructure — it runs once, on a tag, by the person cutting it — and the thing
users install should not carry it.

It is still this module's code, built on the same Gitea SDK, and that is the point:
the release is published by the repository it is a release *of*, with nothing to
trust that is not in this tree and no third-party tool between a tag and what people
download.

## Why it does not use internal/gitea

[`internal/gitea`](../../internal/gitea/AGENTS.md) is otherwise the one door for
every request. Two reasons this one goes around it, both facts about where it runs
rather than preferences:

- that transport files every request body under `.kettle/payload/`, a path resolved
  from the project marker — and the marker is gitignored, so a fresh clone has none
  and a build tool has no business creating one;
- **an asset upload's request body IS the binary.** Filing a 20 MB multipart body as
  JSON in a scratchpad helps nobody.

What it does **not** reinvent is credentials or error vocabulary.
[`internal/config`](../../internal/config/AGENTS.md) resolves the instance, the token
and the repository exactly as `kettle` does — through `ResolveOutsideAProject`,
which falls back to the environment when there is no marker and reads the project
config when there is — and `gitea.Fail` turns an SDK `(response, error)` pair into
the same `*APIError` a `kettle push` would report, so "the tracker said no" has one
spelling in the tree.

## Idempotent end to end

A tag that already has a release **reuses** it, an asset whose name is already there
is **replaced**, and a run repeated because the first died half way through converges
on the same release with the same assets — not a second release with doubled
attachments.

Reuse alone would only make a re-run *not fail*; it would not make it **converge**. A
second run with corrected notes has to leave the release holding the corrected notes,
or the retry that fixed the mistake published the mistake again. Empty notes mean
"leave what is there", not "clear them": `--notes-file` is how notes are supplied,
and a run that supplied none is not asking for the release to be emptied.

A 404 from the release lookup is an **answer** — it is what "no release yet" looks
like — and anything else is reported, because "the instance refused us" and "there is
nothing there" must not both read as "create one".

The by-tag route is a lookup *through the tag*, and a draft need not have one, so a
404 there is followed by a scan of the release listing before anything is created.
Without it a retried `--draft` publish would file a second release for one tag —
which is the failure this whole section exists to prevent, arriving through the one
door that looks like the ordinary case.

## Order of operations

Everything that can be wrong in the arguments is reported **before a release exists
to be half-published**:

1. `--tag` is required;
2. every asset is stat'ed up front — a release that exists with half its assets on
   it, published by a run that then failed on a typo, is the failure this prevents;
3. two files with one basename are refused, because an attachment is addressed by
   name and the second would silently replace the first while the receipt claimed
   both went up;
4. notes are read from disk;
5. only then does anything dial. The attachment listing is read once, before the
   first upload, so the names that matter are the ones that were there when the run
   started.

## Usage

Through the Makefile, which adds the three refusals that make a release
reproducible — dirty tree, `TAG` that is not what `git describe` reports, tag not
pushed to the remote:

```bash
make release TAG=v1.2.3 [NOTES=notes.md] [TITLE="…"]
```

Directly, when the Makefile is not what you want:

```bash
KETTLE_URL=… KETTLE_TOKEN=… KETTLE_REPO=owner/name \
  go run ./cmd/release --tag v1.2.3 --notes-file notes.md dist/kettle_* dist/SHA256SUMS
```

`--draft` and `--prerelease` are there; `--target` names the commitish a tag is
created from when the tag does not exist yet.

## Keeping this file true

- **Scope:** `main.go`, `publish.go` and their test — the argument checks, the
  convergence rules, and the two decisions above about what this tool does *not*
  share with `kettle`.
- **Update it when** a flag is added, the idempotency rules change, it starts or
  stops borrowing something from `internal/`, or the Makefile's refusals change.
- **Do not** move any of this into `kettle`'s command registry without answering the
  first section — a verb here becomes documentation an agent loads.