Navigator Release Skill

Validate plugin integrity and release to marketplace with all safety checks.

Why This Exists

After v5.1.0 incident where nav-profile was referenced in plugin.json but never committed, causing install failures. This skill ensures:

• All referenced skills exist and are committed
• Version consistency across all files
• Tag created AFTER all commits
• Post-release verification

When to Invoke

Auto-invoke when:

• User says “release plugin”, “publish navigator”
• User says “create release”, “deploy new version”
• User says “release vX.Y.Z”

DO NOT invoke if:

• Just committing changes (no release)
• Updating documentation only
• Testing locally

Execution Steps

Step 1: Pre-Release Validation [CRITICAL]

Run validation script:

python3 functions/release_validator.py --check-all

This validates:

1. All skills in plugin.json exist
2. All skill files are committed (not untracked)
3. Version consistency across files
4. No uncommitted changes in skills/

If validation fails: STOP and fix issues before proceeding.

Step 2: Display Validation Results

Show validation summary:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
NAVIGATOR RELEASE VALIDATION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Skills Check:
  [x] nav-loop          ✓ exists, committed
  [x] nav-profile       ✓ exists, committed
  [x] nav-diagnose      ✓ exists, committed
  ...

Version Check:
  plugin.json:      5.1.0 ✓
  marketplace.json: 5.1.0 ✓
  CLAUDE.md:        5.1.0 ✓
  README.md:        5.1.0 ✓

Git Status:
  Uncommitted skills: 0 ✓
  Untracked skills:   0 ✓

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
VALIDATION: PASSED
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Step 3: Confirm Version

Ask user to confirm version:

Ready to release Navigator vX.Y.Z

This will:
1. Commit any pending changes
2. Push to origin/main
3. Create git tag vX.Y.Z
4. Create GitHub release

Proceed? [Y/n]

Step 4: Execute Release

If confirmed, run release sequence:

# 1. Commit if needed
git add .
git commit -m "chore(release): prepare vX.Y.Z" || true

# 2. Push to origin
git push origin main

# 3. Create tag (AFTER push)
git tag -a vX.Y.Z -m "Navigator vX.Y.Z: [description]"
git push origin vX.Y.Z

# 4. Create GitHub release
gh release create vX.Y.Z --title "Navigator vX.Y.Z" --notes-file RELEASE-NOTES-vX.Y.Z.md

Step 5: Post-Release Verification

Verify tag contains all skills:

python3 functions/release_validator.py --verify-tag vX.Y.Z

Clear local cache (for testing):

rm -rf ~/.claude/plugins/cache/navigator-marketplace/

Instruct user to test:

Release complete! To verify:

1. Run: /plugin install navigator
2. Check plugin list shows vX.Y.Z
3. Verify no errors in plugin details

If errors occur, see: .agent/sops/deployment/plugin-release.md

Predefined Functions

functions/release_validator.py

Validates plugin integrity before release:

# Check all skills exist and are committed
python3 functions/release_validator.py --check-all

# Verify specific version
python3 functions/release_validator.py --check-version 5.1.0

# Verify tag contents
python3 functions/release_validator.py --verify-tag v5.1.0

Error Handling

Missing skill detected:

❌ VALIDATION FAILED

Missing skills:
  - skills/nav-profile/ (referenced in plugin.json but not found)

Fix: Create the skill or remove from plugin.json

Uncommitted skills detected:

❌ VALIDATION FAILED

Uncommitted skills:
  - skills/nav-loop/ (modified)
  - skills/nav-profile/ (untracked)

Fix: git add skills/ && git commit -m "Add missing skills"

Version mismatch detected:

❌ VALIDATION FAILED

Version mismatch:
  plugin.json:      5.1.0
  marketplace.json: 5.0.0  ← MISMATCH
  CLAUDE.md:        5.1.0

Fix: Update marketplace.json to 5.1.0

Success Criteria

Release is successful when:

• All skills validated (exist + committed)
• Version consistent across all files
• Git tag created after all commits
• GitHub release published
• Test installation succeeds (no errors)

Quick Reference

# Full release with validation
"Release Navigator v5.2.0"

# Just validate (no release)
"Validate plugin for release"

# Fix after failed release
"Fix release tag v5.1.0"

Related

• SOP: .agent/sops/deployment/plugin-release.md
• Config: .claude-plugin/plugin.json
• Marketplace: .claude-plugin/marketplace.json