Weekly release train — Wednesday 9 AM IST, CalVer per app, hot-fix bypass, git-cliff changelog

Weekly release train Wed 9 AM IST workspace-level cron that tags + releases each app that has commits since its last tag. Versioning is CalVer per app (v2026.06.21). Hot-fixes bypass the train via [hotfix] in the commit message, triggering an immediate tag + deploy. Changelogs auto-generated by git-cliff from conventional commits.

Release cadence — weekly Wednesday train + hot-fix bypass

Decision

Every -app repo in the family ships on a weekly Wednesday release train. A workspace-level cron at Wednesday 9 AM IST scans each submodule for new commits since its last tag, and for each app with new commits:

1. Computes the next CalVer tag (v2026.06.21, with a .N suffix when multiple releases land the same date).
2. Runs git cliff against conventional commits to generate the changelog section.
3. Tags the commit, pushes the tag, and triggers the per-app deploy workflow (per multi-target-build).

Apps with no new commits since the last tag are skipped — the train doesn’t drag dead cars.

The five sub-locks

Wednesday cadence

Weekly is the right cadence for solo-dev scale: fast enough to keep shipped surface fresh, slow enough that a stale Tuesday merge doesn’t ship until it’s been read with rested eyes. Wednesday picked over Friday (Friday releases break weekends) and Monday (Monday releases collide with weekly planning).

Cron trigger

# workspace umbrella .github/workflows/release-train.yml
on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "30 3 * * 3"  # 03:30 UTC Wed = 09:00 IST Wed
  workflow_dispatch:

The job runs at the workspace umbrella; per-app deploy workflows are triggered by the tag push, not by this cron directly. Manual dispatch (workflow_dispatch) for off-cycle ceremonies.

Hot-fix bypass

Any commit message containing the literal token [hotfix] (in the subject or body) triggers an immediate tag + deploy on push to main. The weekly train still runs — it just finds the hot-fix app already tagged and skips it.

git commit -m "fix(pdf-tools): font cache crash on Edge [hotfix]"
git push origin main
# ? per-app workflow detects [hotfix], tags + deploys immediately

CalVer per app

Format: vYYYY.MM.DD from the tag date in UTC. Multiple releases on the same day get .N suffix starting at .2 (the first is unsuffixed): v2026.06.21, v2026.06.21.2, v2026.06.21.3.

CalVer over SemVer because:

• Solo-dev family scale doesn’t need SemVer’s compatibility contract.
• CalVer makes “when did this ship?” a one-glance answer.
• Apps don’t have an API surface — they’re end-user apps; the version is for the developer’s audit trail, not consumer dependency resolution.

NPM packages stay on SemVer — they have an API surface; CalVer would break consumer version-range pins.

git-cliff auto-changelog

git-cliff generates CHANGELOG.md from conventional-commit history. Config lives in cliff.toml at each app’s repo root (or, more likely, synced from a master template in the workspace). Runs in the release workflow before the tag is pushed, so the changelog lands with the tag.

No hand-written changelogs. If a commit isn’t a conventional-commit, it won’t show up in the changelog — that’s the forcing function.

Cross-refs

• multi-target-build — per-app deploy workflow that the tag triggers
• naming-policy-v6 — -app suffix is what the cron filter selects on
• rules/keep-knowledge-fresh

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