ceremony/README.md

# ceremony

One release ceremony for the whole heavy-duty family — implemented once,
tested once, documented here, consumed everywhere else by reference. The
approach and its constraints live in
[#1](https://github.com/heavy-duty/ceremony/issues/1); this README is the
operator-facing doctrine that used to live, three times over, in the
consumers' CONTRIBUTINGs.

- **Adopting or converting a repo** → [docs/CONSUMERS.md](docs/CONSUMERS.md).
- **Working in this repo as an agent** → [AGENTS.md](AGENTS.md) routes you;
  [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md) has the repo specifics.
- **Operating a release, or staring at a red run on main** → read on.

## What a release is

**A release is a PR, and merging it ships it** (box#96, building on box#83;
rig#47, cast#111 converged on the same doctrine). The ceremony PR —
`release: X.Y.Z`, carrying the hand-set `release` label — makes three
stamps:

1. **The version goes bare**: `X.Y.Z-dev` → `X.Y.Z`
   ([lib/version.sh](lib/version.sh)).
2. **The changelog is stamped *and re-armed* — two edits, not one**
   (box#108). `## Unreleased` becomes `## X.Y.Z — DATE`, and an **empty
   `## Unreleased` goes back on top**, immediately above it:

   ```markdown
   ## Unreleased

   ## 0.7.1 — 2026-07-19

   ### Fixed
   ...
   ```

   The second edit is not cosmetic and not deferrable. Between the stamp
   and the next re-creation of that heading, main has no `## Unreleased`. A
   PR authored *before* the release wrote its entry under that heading;
   with the heading gone, git lands the entry under whatever now occupies
   the position — **the section that just shipped** — and it merges
   cleanly, no conflict, no signal. The changelog then credits a released
   version with a change it does not contain, and nothing but a human
   reading the file will ever say so (box#108; confirmed cross-repo as
   rig#66). The [armed guard](#changelog-armed--main-never-sits-disarmed)
   exists because of exactly this edit.

3. **The drill record is present**: `drills/X.Y.Z.md`, non-blank — the
   evidence the release rests on
   ([the drill doctrine](#the-drill-doctrine)).

(This repo's own ceremony adds a fourth stamp: `CEREMONY_SELF_REF` — the
ref consumers' runs fetch this repo at — moves to the version being
released, in [release.yml](.github/workflows/release.yml#L123-L132) and
every other workflow that carries it.
[self-ref-check.sh](.github/scripts/self-ref-check.sh) fails CI here, not
a consumer's release, when it is stale.)

**The merge is the ship decision; the tag is transcription.** After the
merge, [release.yml](.github/workflows/release.yml#L136-L300) asserts its
way to certainty, tags the merge commit, publishes the GitHub release with
the version's own changelog section as the body — the curated prose, never
the generated PR list
([lib/changelog.sh](lib/changelog.sh) is the one canonical extractor) —
and re-arms main by bumping to `X.Y.(Z+1)-dev`
([release.yml](.github/workflows/release.yml#L266-L300)). The machine does
the transcription because humans err silently and machines fail loudly:
**everything asserts its way to certainty and fails loudly, creating
nothing** — a wrong release is worse than a missing one, so every failed
assert leaves zero artifacts: no tag, no release, no bump.

## The two doors

- **The merge door — the paved road.** A push to main
  ([release.yml](.github/workflows/release.yml#L140)) runs the
  [decide table](#what-happens-when-my-pr-lands-on-main); a merged,
  `release`-labeled PR whose version transitioned to bare is the ceremony,
  everything legitimate that isn't one is a green no-op, and every
  half-ceremony dies loudly. Use it for every normal release.

- **The tag door — the fallback and the backfill.** A bare `X.Y.Z` tag
  push — **no `v` prefix**, box's 0.6.0 set the scheme
  ([release.yml](.github/workflows/release.yml#L302-L369)) — publishes the
  same way. The tag is the operator's explicit act, so there is no decide
  and no label check; the one assert is that **the tag names the tree's
  own version**, and a mismatch refuses, creating nothing. No `-dev` bump
  either — the fallback does not rewrite main (cast's precedent). Use it
  when the merge path is red, for backfills, and for the
  [first-release edge](#what-happens-when-my-pr-lands-on-main) (row 4).

Tag + publish (+ the consumer's artifact hook) happen **in the same job,
on purpose**: a `GITHUB_TOKEN`-created tag fires no workflows (GitHub's
anti-recursion), so the merge door's tag can never re-enter the tag door
and double-publish — and that job is the release's only chance to publish
([release.yml](.github/workflows/release.yml#L223-L234), #1 constraint 2).

## What happens when my PR lands on main

The merge door runs on **every** push to main, and the `release` label
legitimately means two things (release ceremonies, and ordinary work *on*
the release machinery), so the door's first act is a decision: the six-row
table in [lib/decide.sh](lib/decide.sh#L29-L61) (issue #8 — the comment
block *is* the spec, and the table is contract-tested offline). Rendered
for operators:

| # | the tree your merge produced | the run | what it means — and your move |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | version `-dev`, unchanged | green `NOTICE`, no-op | Almost every PR — including release-flow work under the `release` label. Nothing to publish, nothing to do. |
| 2 | version changed, still `-dev` | green `NOTICE`, no-op | The post-release bump, or a renumber. "A dev tree is by definition not a release." Nothing to do. |
| 3 | version bare, unchanged, already released | green `NOTICE`, no-op | The post-release window: the ceremony landed, the `-dev` bump hasn't. Nothing to do. |
| 4 | version bare, unchanged, **never released** | **red, nothing created** | The label says ship but this PR did not mint the version. Mislabeled → drop the label. Meant to release → it forgot the bump; re-do the ceremony PR. A repo whose first version never carried `-dev` ships its first release by the **tag door** — the known first-release edge (cast#111; [lib/decide.sh](lib/decide.sh#L70-L74)). |
| 5 | version transitioned to bare, **no merged `release`-labeled PR** behind the commit | **red, nothing created** | A transition nobody declared — a release is a labeled ceremony PR, not a bare push. Label a proper ceremony PR and re-do it, or publish by the tag door if the tree is genuinely right. |
| 6 | version transitioned to bare, merged `release`-labeled PR behind the commit | **the ceremony** | Tag → notes → publish → `-dev` re-arm. Your move afterwards: verify the release exists and main reads `X.Y.(Z+1)-dev`. |

The green rows are the point as much as the red ones: the machinery must
be safe to work on, so every legitimate non-ceremony is a green `NOTICE`
no-op — never a red run on main per infra PR
([lib/decide.sh](lib/decide.sh#L6-L12)). The label is hand-set intent and
automation never guesses; the version transition is the interlock, and
label-without-transition (row 4) and transition-without-label (row 5) both
refuse (#1 constraint 8).

## The guards

Three composite actions run in every consumer's CI (and in this repo's
own). Shared shape: version-keyed where the tree's state matters, loud
where it fails, and **a file of its own so a test can drive it**. The full
war stories are in the scripts' header comments — authoritative and longer
than this; what follows is the operator's cut.

### changelog-armed — main never sits disarmed

**The rule** ([actions/changelog-armed/changelog-armed.sh](actions/changelog-armed/changelog-armed.sh#L27-L36)),
keyed on the tree's version:

- `-dev` tree → the top section **must** be `## Unreleased`.
- bare tree (the ceremony PR and its merge) → the top section may be
  `## Unreleased` (re-armed) *or* the stamped section for exactly that
  version — **and** that version's section must exist and carry prose,
  because it is the one about to ship (the half-ceremony refusal, rig#67:
  version bumped, stamp missing — asserted through the very extractor the
  publisher uses, so the two cannot disagree about what a section is).

**The incident**: box#108 / rig#66 — the silent mislanding described
[above](#what-a-release-is). **Red means** a PR entry has nowhere safe to
land; **the fix** is to re-arm: add an empty `## Unreleased` above the top
stamped section.

**Do not "simplify" this to "always require `## Unreleased`".** The
unconditional form is false by construction on the ceremony PR's own tree
— it makes every release unshippable — and rig#44 and cast#108 both had
to revert exactly that
([the script's header](actions/changelog-armed/changelog-armed.sh#L8-L16)).
The version-keyed form is what rig and cast get back by adopting this repo.

One consequence worth knowing before it happens: a ceremony PR that stamps
and forgets to re-arm still passes this guard — a bare tree is allowed to
be stamped. It goes red **the moment the automatic `-dev` bump lands on
main** ([the script](actions/changelog-armed/changelog-armed.sh#L37-L42)).
The guard does not block the release; it refuses to let main *sit*
disarmed, which is the window a late PR falls into.

### changelog-monotonic — shipped headings are append-only

**The rule**
([actions/changelog-monotonic/changelog-monotonic.sh](actions/changelog-monotonic/changelog-monotonic.sh#L4-L7)):
the set of `## X.Y.Z` headings on your branch must be a **superset** of
the set at the merge base, and no heading may appear twice on HEAD. The
rule needs no tuning because release headings are append-only by doctrine:
the ceremony adds one and nothing ever legitimately removes one — so
superset has no exception to carve. The ceremony's own stamp passes by
construction: rewriting `## Unreleased` into `## X.Y.Z — DATE` adds a
heading and removes none (`Unreleased` is not a version heading; it is
[changelog-armed](#changelog-armed--main-never-sits-disarmed)'s business).

**The incidents**: box#122 (caught in review of box#118) — an author
adding an entry under `## Unreleased` **replaced** the heading below it
instead of inserting above it; git merges that cleanly, and the shipped
section's body is silently absorbed into `## Unreleased`. And box#118
itself — a bad rebase *duplicated* a shipped heading, which containment is
blind to, which is why uniqueness-on-HEAD is a separate assert
([the script](actions/changelog-monotonic/changelog-monotonic.sh#L96-L116)).

**Red means** a shipped section was deleted (put the heading back and
insert **above** it) or duplicated (collapse to one heading; the failure
message walks through both fixes with the diff to run). **This guard needs
history**: the consumer's checkout must use `fetch-depth: 0`, and in CI an
unresolvable base is a hard failure, not a skip — a guard that can quietly
stop guarding is the failure shape this family of checks exists to refuse
([strict mode](actions/changelog-monotonic/changelog-monotonic.sh#L60-L79)).

### drill-recorded — a release carries its evidence

**The rule**
([actions/drill-recorded/drill-recorded.sh](actions/drill-recorded/drill-recorded.sh#L23-L48)),
keyed on the tree's version: a `-dev` tree passes with nothing to assert
(a development tree ships nothing); a bare tree — the ceremony PR and its
merge — must carry `drills/<version>.md` with at least one
non-whitespace character. One file per version, so `0.9.0.md` and
`0.9.0-rc1.md` are simply different files and prefix confusion is
unrepresentable (#1 constraint 7).

**The incident**: box's CONTRIBUTING said since box#96 that the release
ritual must be run and recorded. No release ever did it — box#95, box#114
and box#148 all shipped as a version bump plus a changelog stamp, because
the gate was a sentence in a document and the only thing standing on it
was a reviewer remembering to ask. The rule moved into CI, where it fires
whether or not anyone is paying attention.

**Red means** the release is asserting a ritual it left no evidence of.
**The fix is to run the drill** and record it — or to waive it *in
writing* at the same path: the guard demands a **record, not a passing
result** ([below](#the-drill-doctrine)).

## The drill doctrine

**Evidence, not success.** The guard asserts a record exists — a failed
drill honestly written down satisfies it, and so does a maintainer waiver
that says plainly the drill was waived and why. What it refuses is
silence: a skip must cost a deliberate, reviewable file in the diff,
which is precisely what box's three silent skips never produced. CI
cannot run a consumer's drill (box's wants real hardware and the better
part of an hour); it can only refuse a release that never ran one.

**Each repo defines what its drill *means*** — the gate only reads the
record. box asserts the **isolation contract**; rig asserts
**convergence** (a machine reaches its role, idempotently); cast asserts
**promotion** (A→B reproduces, the diff is idempotent); ceremony's own
drill is a **door rehearsal** — both doors exercised end-to-end on a
disposable repo (#11 names the six probes); incubator's is TBD in
heavy-duty/incubator. Each repo states its meaning in its own
`drills/README.md`. Three different exercises sharing a substrate is why
the records are per-repo — they are not phases of one script.

**Drills exercise candidate refs, not released artifacts.** A ref is a
static identifier that exists as soon as the release branch does, so no
repo has to be released — or drilled — before another can be drilled:
what looks like a box↔rig recursion at runtime dissolves into two
independent tests against one fixed pair of refs. And drilling the
candidate *is* drilling the release: a ceremony PR's diff is the stamps
and nothing else, so no executable byte differs between the tree that was
drilled and the tree that ships.

**A cross-repo release set shares one run ID.** Each repo records its own
legs in its own `drills/X.Y.Z.md`, citing that run ID and the sibling
SHAs, so the records reconcile afterwards — but the guard only ever reads
the repo it runs in. If a defect shows up only in the combination: patch,
re-drill, re-record. The set converges; it is not required to be right in
one pass.

## Troubleshooting red main

Every refusal the release flow can emit, verbatim, with cause and remedy.
The catalog is generated from the sources, not paraphrased — regenerate
it with:

```sh
grep -n -A2 'refuse \|>&2' lib/decide.sh lib/facts.sh .github/workflows/release.yml
```

`$VER`-style variables appear as the run interpolates them.

### The decision refused ([lib/decide.sh](lib/decide.sh))

> the version '$VER' is bare, unchanged by this PR, and never released — the label says ship but this PR did not mint the version. Refusing to guess — creating nothing.
> (If this PR was mislabeled, drop the label; if it was meant to release, it forgot the bump. A first release whose version never carried -dev ships by the tag door — the known first-release edge.)

Row 4 ([L129–L133](lib/decide.sh#L129-L133)). The message is the remedy:
drop the label, or re-do the ceremony with the bump, or take the tag door.

> the version transitioned ('$BASE_VER' -> '$VER') but no merged, release-labeled PR is behind this commit — a release is a labeled ceremony PR, not a bare push — creating nothing.

Row 5 ([L147–L149](lib/decide.sh#L147-L149)). Someone pushed or merged a
version transition without the `release` label. Label a proper ceremony PR,
or — if the tree is genuinely the release — publish by the tag door.

> VER is empty — the caller failed to establish the version at the pushed head. Refusing to decide — creating nothing.
> BASE_VER is empty — the caller failed to establish the version at the base. Refusing to decide — creating nothing.
> RELEASED='${RELEASED}' — expected yes, no, or empty. Refusing to decide — creating nothing.
> LABELED='${LABELED}' — expected yes, no, or empty. Refusing to decide — creating nothing.
> the version '$VER' is bare and unchanged, but RELEASED is empty — this state is decided by whether '$VER' is already released, and the caller did not establish that fact. Refusing to guess — creating nothing.
> the version transitioned ('$BASE_VER' -> '$VER') but LABELED is empty — a transition ships only behind a merged, release-labeled PR, and the caller did not establish that fact. Refusing to guess — creating nothing.

The fact-gathering guards
([L92–L105](lib/decide.sh#L92-L105), [L135](lib/decide.sh#L135),
[L151](lib/decide.sh#L151)): a missing fact must never fall through to
"no". These indicate a bug upstream in [lib/facts.sh](lib/facts.sh) or the
workflow plumbing, not an operator mistake — read the run's `facts:`
stderr line and file what you find.

### The facts could not be established ([lib/facts.sh](lib/facts.sh), [lib/version.sh](lib/version.sh))

> facts: unknown VERSION_SOURCE '$VERSION_SOURCE' — expected file or package-json

[L37](lib/facts.sh#L37): the caller's `version-source:` input is neither
`file` nor `package-json`. Fix the caller.

> version_read: $path: no such file
> version_read: $path is empty
> version_read: $path: no version field
> version_read: node is required for version-source: package-json

[lib/version.sh](lib/version.sh#L16-L66): the tree's version source is
missing, empty, or unreadable. A wrong release is worse than a missing
one, so an unreadable state is never an empty print — restore the
`VERSION` file (or `package.json` version field) on main.

### The merge door refused ([release.yml](.github/workflows/release.yml#L136-L300))

> CHANGELOG.md has no '## $VER' section at the merge commit — the ceremony PR must stamp it; refusing to publish an empty release

[L202–L205](.github/workflows/release.yml#L202-L205): the ceremony merged
without its stamp (a state the
[armed guard](#changelog-armed--main-never-sits-disarmed) already refuses
on the PR — red main here means it was overridden). Stamp the section on
main, then publish by the tag door.

> tag '$VER' already exists — this release already happened, or a manual tag won the race; refusing to re-release, creating nothing.
> release '$VER' already exists — refusing to re-release, creating nothing.

[L207–L222](.github/workflows/release.yml#L207-L222), the nothing-exists
assert — what makes a re-run of a completed ceremony refuse instead of
clobber, and what catches a manual tag racing the merge. If the release
truly exists, there is nothing to do: this red is the system declining to
do the thing twice. If the tag exists but the release does not (a manual
tag won the race, or
[a failed artifact hook](docs/CONSUMERS.md#the-artifact-hook)), recover by
the tag door: delete and re-push the tag, or `gh release create` by hand
from a fixed tree.

> direct push refused (branch protection?) — opening the bump PR instead

[L292–L300](.github/workflows/release.yml#L292-L300) — loud, but not a
refusal: the post-release `-dev` bump could not push directly, so the run
opened a `release`-labeled bump PR itself. Your move: merge it promptly —
until it lands, main is sitting bare, where a dev install
[impersonates the release](.github/workflows/release.yml#L291) and the
[armed guard's window](#changelog-armed--main-never-sits-disarmed) stays
open.

### The tag door refused ([release.yml](.github/workflows/release.yml#L302-L369))

> tag '$GITHUB_REF_NAME' does not match the tree's version '$ver' — creating nothing.
> A release is a PR, then a tag: the release PR bumps the version and stamps the changelog; the tag goes on its MERGE commit. Delete this tag and re-tag the right commit.

[L333–L337](.github/workflows/release.yml#L333-L337). The message is the
remedy.

> CHANGELOG.md has no '## $VER' section — stamp the Unreleased section in the release PR before tagging; refusing to publish an empty release

[L346–L349](.github/workflows/release.yml#L346-L349). The tagged tree was
never stamped. Stamp first, then delete and re-push the tag.

### Red main that is not the release workflow

Consumer CI runs its guard steps on pushes to main too (this repo's
[ci.yml](.github/workflows/ci.yml) does the same). The one guard red an
operator will actually meet on main is
**changelog-armed after a re-arm was forgotten**: the ceremony stamped
without putting `## Unreleased` back, the release's own `-dev` bump
landed, and the guard now says (first line):

> changelog-armed: the version is '$ver' (a development tree) but the top
>   section of $changelog is: …

The fix is a one-line PR: add an empty `## Unreleased` above the stamped
section. The full message
([the script](actions/changelog-armed/changelog-armed.sh#L87-L101))
carries the same instruction.

## Design lineage

The ceremony converged across box#83 → box#96, rig#32 → rig#47, and
cast#96 → cast#111; this repo is those three implementations folded into
one (the drift that motivated it is measured in
[#1](https://github.com/heavy-duty/ceremony/issues/1)). The load-bearing
constraints — each bought with an incident, none of them safe to
"simplify" away — are listed in
[#1](https://github.com/heavy-duty/ceremony/issues/1) and carried, with
their war stories, in the headers of the scripts they bind:
[release.yml](.github/workflows/release.yml#L1-L109),
[lib/decide.sh](lib/decide.sh#L1-L74),
[lib/facts.sh](lib/facts.sh#L1-L24), and the three
[guard scripts](actions/). The comments are the documentation of record;
this README is their operator-facing cut.