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naudachu 01fb5a2703 feat: publish releases with this repository's own SDK code

There is no CI: the instance has no act_runner and none is planned, so releases
are cut by hand. That makes `make check` the only thing standing between a
mistake and the tracker, and it is one command: gofmt, vet, the suite with the
cache defeated, `go mod verify`, a vendored build, and `kettle gen skills
--check`. The last one is the invariant worth having — the plugin's SKILL.md
command reference is generated from the binary's registry, so a flag that
changed cannot ship with documentation that recommends the old one.

`cli/cmd/release` publishes to Gitea using the same SDK the binary already
vendors, which is a pleasing thing to be able to say: nothing third-party
handles the artifacts. It is a second binary rather than a `kettle` subcommand
on purpose — `kettle`'s command tree is what generates the plugin's skills, so a
verb there ships to every operator, and publishing a release is build
infrastructure. It is idempotent end to end: an existing release for the tag is
reused, an asset of the same name is replaced rather than doubled, and a retried
run converges instead of duplicating.

`make release` refuses three things, each with its own message: a dirty working
tree, a TAG that is not what `git describe` reports, and a tag the remote does
not have. A release built from uncommitted code is unreproducible and nobody
finds out until they need to reproduce it.

`kettle version` reports the stamp, the toolchain and the VCS revision. The
default is `dev`, and a hand build says so and means it — a binary out of
somebody's working tree is not a release and must not claim to be one.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

2026-08-12 01:01:27 +05:00

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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 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 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:

--tag is required;
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;
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;
notes are read from disk;
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:

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

Directly, when the Makefile is not what you want:

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.

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