Releasing

How Reasonix ships, who can ship what, and the canary-before-stable flow.

Branch model: trunk + tags

main-v2 is the single development line (the v2 / 1.x trunk). Every PR merges here.
Production is a tag, not a branch. A release is a tagged snapshot of main-v2: v1.4.0 (CLI), npm-v1.4.0 (npm), desktop-v1.4.0 (desktop).
v1 is the archived 1.0/legacy line — maintenance only.
Hotfix an already-released version by branching from its tag, fixing, and tagging again.

There is no separate "production" or "develop" branch by design — the canary channel provides the pre-release buffer instead of a long-lived branch.

Channels

Surface	Stable	Pre-release buffer
npm	`latest` (current 1.x stable)	`next` (rc), `canary` (`npm i reasonix@canary`)
Desktop	R2 `latest/` pointer + release gateway	R2 `canary/` pointer + release gateway proxy (never on the GitHub releases page)

A canary build is isolated: it never moves latest / next / desktop latest/. Testers opt in explicitly. (Desktop builds carry -X main.channel=canary; npm versions ending in -canary.N publish under the canary dist-tag.)

Who can release what

Action	Who	Mechanism
Cut a canary	any maintainer (write access)	`workflow_dispatch`, runs free (open `canary` environment)
Ship `next` / stable	esengine only	stable publish jobs gate on the `release` environment — esengine must approve before anything goes public

So a maintainer can dispatch a canary anytime, but a stable release — even one a maintainer starts by pushing a tag — pauses in the Actions UI until esengine approves the release environment deployment.

Repo settings backing this: Environments → release has esengine as a required reviewer; canary has none. (Optional hardening: a tag ruleset restricting v*/npm-v*/desktop-v* creation to esengine, so maintainers can't even start a stable release.)

The release loop

Develop — PRs land on main-v2 (branch auto-deletes on merge).
Cut a canary before the intended release (e.g. heading for 1.4.0):
- Desktop: Actions → Release desktop → channel: canary, base_version: 1.4.0
- CLI: Actions → Release npm → base_version: 1.4.0
- Publishes 1.4.0-canary.N to the desktop R2 canary/ pointer (no GitHub release) and npm @canary.
Test — testers install reasonix@canary (CLI) or grab the desktop canary build from its R2 link, and report bugs.
Fix on main-v2 via PRs; re-cut the canary as needed (canary.N bumps).
Ship stable when the canary is clean — push the three tags:
```
git tag v1.4.0         && git push origin v1.4.0          # CLI binaries + Homebrew
git tag npm-v1.4.0     && git push origin npm-v1.4.0      # npm -> latest
git tag desktop-v1.4.0 && git push origin desktop-v1.4.0  # desktop -> R2 latest/
```
Each stable run waits for esengine to approve the release environment before publishing. A stable npm-v* publish moves the latest dist-tag automatically (build.mjs) and release-npm.yml verifies it landed. Do not skip the npm tag: the stable CLI release (release.yml) fails when the matching npm-v* tag was never pushed — that guard exists because 1.0.0–1.17.5 shipped without stable npm tags and npm update -g silently downgraded users to 0.53.2 (#5822). A pushed tag whose publish is still awaiting approval only warns; release-npm.yml's verify step owns asserting the dist-tag lands.
Next cycle — the canary rolls on toward 1.5.0.

Notes

Canary version numbers use the workflow run_number, so the desktop and CLI canary numbers differ (e.g. canary.11 vs canary.2). Only monotonicity per channel matters.
A stable -rc tag (e.g. npm-v1.4.0-rc.1) still ships under next, not canary.
Desktop in-app updates use R2 first, then the crash.reasonix.io desktop release gateway. The gateway resolves the desktop-v* release line directly and never uses GitHub's repository-wide /releases/latest, because plain v* tags are the CLI release line. Stable CLI releases also carry a compatibility latest.json asset so older desktop builds that still use GitHub latest do not 404.
Canary uses R2 plus the same gateway proxy for the canary/ pointer; it never appears on the GitHub releases page.
Windows and Linux apply downloaded, minisign-verified artifacts in place. macOS applies in-app only for Developer ID signed and notarized builds; ad-hoc/local builds fall back to the download page.

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