Release Management

Workflows

Deep release management workflow—versioning semantics, branching and tags, release checklist, communications, rollback criteria, and hotfix discipline. Use when shipping software on a cadence or coordinating multi-team releases.

Install

openclaw skills install release-management

Release Management (Deep Workflow)

Releases combine coordination and risk management: what ships, when, how we verify, and how we recover.

When to Offer This Workflow

Trigger conditions:

Scheduled or train-based releases; need predictable cadence
Hotfix chaos or unclear ownership
SemVer vs calendar versioning debates

Initial offer:

Use six stages: (1) versioning policy, (2) branching & tags, (3) release candidate & checklist, (4) communication, (5) deploy & verify, (6) post-release & hotfixes). Confirm deployment model (continuous delivery vs batch releases).

Stage 1: Versioning Policy

Goal: Define SemVer (or alternative) rules: what counts as breaking, how migrations are communicated, and how pre-releases work.

Exit condition: Written policy linking version numbers to customer-facing risk.

Stage 2: Branching & Tags

Goal: Choose a strategy (trunk-based with release branches, GitFlow-lite, etc.) and use annotated tags tied to changelog entries.

Stage 3: Release Candidate & Checklist

Goal: Freeze criteria: QA scope, DB migrations dry-run, feature flag defaults, config diffs, load/perf smoke for risky changes.

Stage 4: Communication

Goal: Internal notes for support/CS/SRE; external release notes with breaking changes highlighted and migration steps.

Stage 5: Deploy & Verify

Goal: Canary or progressive rollout where possible; SLO dashboards; rollback trigger agreed before deploy starts.

Stage 6: Post-Release & Hotfixes

Goal: Lightweight retro; hotfix branches from the release tag; forward-merge fixes back to main; track incidents linked to release.

Final Review Checklist

Versioning and changelog reflect risk
Branch/tag strategy is team-wide consensus
Checklist covers migrations, flags, QA, and comms
Rollback plan rehearsed or documented
Hotfix process defined

Tips for Effective Guidance

Smallest releasable increment reduces blast radius.
Coordinate DB schema changes with expand/contract patterns when zero-downtime matters.
Complement with ci-cd and changelog-authoring skills for tooling depth.

Handling Deviations

SaaS with heavy feature-flagging: “release” may be continuous—still document communication and flag cleanup discipline.