OpenClaw Release Maintainer

Use this skill for release and publish-time workflow. Keep ordinary development changes and GHSA-specific advisory work outside this skill.

Respect release guardrails

• Do not change version numbers without explicit operator approval.
• Ask permission before any npm publish or release step.
• Use the private maintainer release docs for the actual runbook and docs/reference/RELEASING.md for public policy.

Keep release channel naming aligned

• stable: tagged releases only, with npm dist-tag latest
• beta: prerelease tags like vYYYY.M.D-beta.N, with npm dist-tag beta
• Prefer -beta.N; do not mint new -1 or -2 beta suffixes
• dev: moving head on main
• When using a beta Git tag, publish npm with the matching beta version suffix so the plain version is not consumed or blocked

Handle versions and release files consistently

• Version locations include:
  • package.json
  • apps/android/app/build.gradle.kts
  • apps/ios/Sources/Info.plist
  • apps/ios/Tests/Info.plist
  • apps/macos/Sources/OpenClaw/Resources/Info.plist
  • docs/install/updating.md
  • Peekaboo Xcode project and plist version fields
• “Bump version everywhere” means all version locations above except appcast.xml.
• Release signing and notary credentials live outside the repo in the private maintainer docs.

Build changelog-backed release notes

• Changelog entries should be user-facing, not internal release-process notes.
• When cutting a mac release with a beta GitHub prerelease:
  • tag vYYYY.M.D-beta.N from the release commit
  • create a prerelease titled openclaw YYYY.M.D-beta.N
  • use release notes from the matching CHANGELOG.md version section
  • attach at least the zip and dSYM zip, plus dmg if available
• Keep the top version entries in CHANGELOG.md sorted by impact:
  • ### Changes first
  • ### Fixes deduped with user-facing fixes first

Run publish-time validation

Before tagging or publishing, run:

node --import tsx scripts/release-check.ts
pnpm release:check
pnpm test:install:smoke

For a non-root smoke path:

OPENCLAW_INSTALL_SMOKE_SKIP_NONROOT=1 pnpm test:install:smoke

Use the right auth flow

• Core openclaw publish uses GitHub trusted publishing.
• Do not use NPM_TOKEN or the plugin OTP flow for core releases.
• @openclaw/* plugin publishes use a separate maintainer-only flow.
• Only publish plugins that already exist on npm; bundled disk-tree-only plugins stay unpublished.

GHSA advisory work

• Use openclaw-ghsa-maintainer for GHSA advisory inspection, patch/publish flow, private-fork validation, and GHSA API-specific publish checks.