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Hindsight Release

Free

Streamline your Hindsight versioning and changelog process.

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Free · Opens the source repo

What Hindsight Release does

The Hindsight Release skill is designed for developers and teams using the Hindsight framework, facilitating the process of cutting core releases efficiently. This skill automates the version bumping, tagging, and changelog generation necessary for a new release, ensuring that your core product, including API, clients, CLI, and control plane, is up-to-date and accurately documented. It integrates seamlessly with the existing GitHub Actions workflows to publish packages to PyPI, npm, and Helm, making it a crucial tool for maintaining a robust release cycle.

When utilizing this skill, users must follow a structured pre-flight checklist to ensure that the release is cut from the latest origin/main branch and that all intended fixes are merged. The skill emphasizes the importance of verifying the state of the main branch and provides clear instructions on how to manage worktrees to avoid conflicts. By running the release.sh script, users can automate the entire release process, which includes bumping the version number, regenerating OpenAPI specs, updating documentation, and pushing changes directly to main. This eliminates the need for manual intervention and reduces the likelihood of errors during the release process.

After the release is tagged, the skill assists in creating a separate PR for the changelog and blog post, ensuring that documentation is consistently updated alongside the code. Users can generate a changelog entry that summarizes the changes since the last release and create a blog post that communicates the user impact of the new version. This skill is particularly beneficial for teams that prioritize transparency and communication with their users, as it encourages thorough documentation practices.

In summary, the Hindsight Release skill is an essential tool for developers looking to streamline their release process, maintain accurate documentation, and ensure that their users are informed about changes in the Hindsight framework.

When to use it

Use this skill when you are ready to cut a new core release of Hindsight and need to automate versioning and changelog updates.

When not to use it

This skill is not suitable for releasing integrations, as those should be handled with a different script. Additionally, it should not be used if there are unmerged changes in the `main` branch.

What you can build with it

Cutting a New Core Release

When ready to release a new version of Hindsight, use this skill to automate the versioning process and ensure accurate documentation.

Updating Documentation

After a release, utilize the skill to generate a changelog and blog post, keeping users informed about changes and improvements.

Managing Release Workflow

For teams looking to streamline their release process, this skill provides a structured approach to versioning and documentation.

How to install Hindsight Release

View source

1. Install with the skills CLI

npx skills add vectorize-io/hindsight/hs-release --agent claude-code

2. Or install it manually

Download the skill folder and drop it into ~/.claude/skills/ for all projects, or .claude/skills/ to scope it to one repo. Restart Claude Code so it picks up the new skill.

Anthropic's agentic coding CLI, and the reference implementation of Agent Skills. Drop a skill folder into ~/.claude/skills and Claude Code loads it automatically whenever a task matches the skill's description. Claude Code docs

Inside SKILL.md

Written by vectorize-io

Hindsight Release

Cut a core Hindsight release and open the accompanying changelog/blog PR. This is for the core product version (API, clients, CLI, control plane, Helm). Integrations are versioned independently — use scripts/release-integration.sh for those, not this skill.

The release is irreversible and outward-facing: it tags a version and pushes it straight to main, which triggers CI that publishes packages to PyPI / npm / Helm. Confirm the version number and that the intended fixes are already merged to main before you start.

Step 0 — Pre-flight

  1. Decide the base. A release is cut from the latest origin/main, never from a feature branch. git fetch origin --tags first. Confirm the "couple of fixes" the user means are actually merged to main (git log v<prev>..origin/main --oneline).
  2. Find where main is checked out. main is often already checked out in a sibling worktree (git worktree list). You cannot check out main in a second worktree — run the release in the worktree that already holds it. If that worktree is dirty with throwaway cruft (.next-* tsconfig paths, screenshots), git stash push -u, fast-forward to origin/main, run the release, then git stash pop.
  3. Pitfall: never pipe the checkout in an && chain like git checkout main 2>&1 | tail && git reset --hard ... — the pipe's exit status is tail's (always 0), so a failed checkout won't stop the chain and the reset fires on the wrong branch. Check out as its own command and verify git branch --show-current before resetting.

Step 1 — Cut the release

Run from the worktree on a clean main:

./scripts/release.sh <version>     # e.g. 0.8.1  (no leading v)

release.sh bumps the version in every component, regenerates the OpenAPI spec + all client SDKs, updates docs versioning, commits Release v<version>, tags v<version>, and pushes the commit and tag directly to main. The push triggers the Release GitHub Actions workflow that builds and publishes the packages. It is not a PR.

Verify after: gh run list --limit 5 should show the Release v<version> workflow running, and git ls-remote --tags origin v<version> should return the tag.

Step 2 — Changelog + blog PR (separate)

Done after the tag exists, as its own PR (precedent: v0.8.0 = #2053, v0.8.1 = #2080). Work on a branch off the new main:

git checkout -b docs-changelog-<version> origin/main

Only spin up a separate worktree (git worktree add ../hindsight-changelog-<version> -b docs-changelog-<version> origin/main) if you can't get a clean checkout otherwise — e.g. main is held in another worktree and the current one has work you don't want to disturb.

Branch naming: use the docs- (hyphen) convention, e.g. docs-changelog-0.8.1. A remote branch literally named docs exists, so any docs/... branch is rejected on push with directory file conflict.

Changelog

uv run --directory hindsight-dev generate-changelog <version>

LLM-summarizes the commits between the previous tag and v<version> and prepends an entry to hindsight-docs/src/pages/changelog/index.md. Requires OPENAI_API_KEY (already in the repo .env). It excludes hindsight-integrations/ source, but new integrations whose commits also touched docs will still appear — that matches precedent, leave them in the changelog.

Blog post

Hand-write hindsight-docs/blog/YYYY-MM-DD-version-X-Y-Z.md (mirror an existing one; patch releases are short — see 2026-06-02-version-0-7-2.md). Guidance:

  • Explain user impact, not internals/mechanism. Lead with what the user can now do and what to set. Config/env-var names are fine (developer-facing), code symbols and internals are not.
  • Do not list integrations in the release blog. The core blog covers core engine / API / ops changes; each integration ships its own changelog. (Integrations may still appear in the generated changelog/index.md — that's fine; just keep them out of the blog.)
  • Call out an upgrade recommendation when there are operational/data-integrity fixes.
  • Validate formatting: npx prettier --check <blog file>.

Sync the docs skill

./scripts/generate-docs-skill.sh

Refreshes skills/hindsight-docs/references/changelog/index.md. It will also bump skills/hindsight-docs/references/openapi.json by one version — release.sh regenerates the skill before bumping OpenAPI, so the skill copy lags a version in the release commit; this step syncs it. Expect a one-line version diff there; keep it.

Commit, push, PR

git add -A
git commit --no-verify -m "docs: changelog and blog post for v<version>"
git push -u origin docs-changelog-<version>
gh pr create --base main --title "docs: changelog and blog post for v<version>" --body "..."

Expected files in the PR: the changelog entry, the new blog post, the regenerated skill changelog mirror, and the skill openapi.json version sync.

Cleanup

If you created a temporary worktree, remove it once the PR is up (git worktree remove ../hindsight-changelog-<version>; the branch stays on origin). Restore any stash you popped in Step 0.

Frequently asked questions about Hindsight Release

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