home / skills / nickcrew / claude-cortex / release-prep

release-prep skill

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This skill streamlines production release prep with a safety-first checklist, validating quality, updating versions and docs, and aligning deployment readiness.

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SKILL.md

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---
name: release-prep
description: Use when preparing a production release or release candidate - provides a checklist-driven workflow for validation, versioning, build optimization, documentation updates, and deployment readiness.
---

# Release Prep

## Overview
Standardize release preparation with a safety-first checklist: validate quality and security, update versions and docs, build production artifacts, and prepare rollout/rollback plans.

## When to Use
- Preparing a release candidate or production deploy
- Coordinating pre-release validation and documentation
- Ensuring versioning, changelog, and build steps are consistent

Avoid when:
- You only need a quick version bump or doc update
- The release process is owned by a separate automation pipeline

## Quick Reference

| Task | Load reference |
| --- | --- |
| Release preparation | `skills/release-prep/references/prepare-release.md` |

## Workflow
1. Confirm release scope and version.
2. Load the release preparation reference.
3. Run pre-release validation (tests, security, performance).
4. Update versions, changelog, and docs.
5. Build production artifacts and validate.
6. Produce deployment checklist and rollback plan.

## Output
- Release readiness checklist
- Validation results and blockers
- Deployment plan with rollback steps

## Common Mistakes
- Skipping security or performance checks
- Shipping without updating changelog or docs
- Building artifacts without validating environment parity

Overview

This skill standardizes release preparation using a safety-first, checklist-driven workflow. It helps teams validate quality and security, update versioning and documentation, build production artifacts, and prepare deployment and rollback plans. The result is a reproducible release readiness package you can run before any production or release-candidate deploy.

How this skill works

The skill guides you through an ordered checklist: confirm release scope and version, run pre-release validations (tests, security scans, performance checks), update changelogs and docs, build and verify production artifacts, and generate a deployment checklist with rollback steps. It inspects test results, security scan outputs, build logs, and documentation changes to surface blockers and produce a final readiness report. The workflow is CLI-driven and integrates with existing pipelines and artifact stores.

When to use it

Preparing a release candidate or production deployment
Coordinating cross-team pre-release validation and sign-off
Ensuring consistent versioning, changelog, and documentation updates
Verifying build artifacts and environment parity before rollout
Creating deployment and rollback checklists for operations

Best practices

Run full test suites, static analysis, and security scans before building artifacts
Update version numbers and changelog entries as part of the same release task
Validate builds in an environment that mirrors production (config, dependencies)
Capture validation outputs and blockers as structured evidence for sign-off
Keep rollback steps explicit and tested, not just documented

Example use cases

Finalizing a 1.2.0 release candidate: run validations, update changelog, and produce the deployment checklist
Coordinating a cross-functional release window where QA, Security, and Ops must approve
Preparing a hotfix release: ensure tests and security scans pass, build artifacts, and create a quick rollback plan
Verifying environment parity by building artifacts in a staging environment and comparing results to production

FAQ

Can this skill replace CI/CD automation?

No. Use it as a pre-release orchestration and validation layer that complements CI/CD pipelines. It standardizes human checks and produces artifacts for automation to consume.

What outputs does the skill produce?

A release readiness checklist, structured validation results with blockers, a changelog and version updates summary, and a deployment plan including rollback steps.