[johnsca]

ENG-9233

what

• Opens the caller's bump dropdown on (choose one) rather than defaulting
  to patch, so a dispatch has to answer the question. The called workflow
  already rejects anything but the three real values, so the placeholder needs
  no new validation.
• Drops the step that required a first release to be a major bump.
• Updates the README to match, in the prose about refusals and in the caller
  block it offers for copying.

why

patch was a poor default on a dispatch that cannot be taken back. On a
repository with no tags it opens at v0.0.1, and immutable releases burn that
name for good. On any later release it quietly ships a patch for work that
earned a minor, which nothing caught, because the guard only ever looked at
first releases.

Asking the question fixes both, and it fixes them at the point where the
default was wrong rather than downstream of it. The guard can then go. A
repository that explicitly asks for a patch on an empty tag history means
v0.0.1, and a minor bump climbs out of it, so there is nothing left worth
refusing. Whether a repository opens at v0.0.1, v0.1.0 or v1.0.0 is its
own call, and cut-release.yml no longer holds a view on it.

testing

• just lint passes here and in the five module repositories.
• uvx zizmor@1.23.1 -v --gh-token=... .github/workflows/ reports no
  findings, with the five online audits scheduled rather than skipped.
• Ran the bump check against (choose one), patch, minor, major,
  Patch, empty and majorly. Only the three lowercase values pass, so
  the placeholder stops a run the same way any other unrecognised bump
  does.
• Parsed each caller to confirm the placeholder survives YAML as the
  literal (choose one) and that no default key remains.
• After merge, dispatch Release here and confirm the dropdown opens on
  (choose one) and that submitting it fails at the bump check.
• Dispatch Release with a minor bump and confirm v1.1.0 publishes
  against v1.0.0 as previous.

docs

The README's account of the refusals now covers the placeholder, and says what
each bump opens at on a repository with no tags rather than naming one of them
as required.

[cubic-dev-ai]

No issues found across 3 files

Confidence score: 5/5

• Automated review surfaced no issues in the provided summaries.
• No files require special attention.

Architecture diagram

sequenceDiagram
    participant Dispatch as Manual Dispatch
    participant Inputs as Inputs (bump)
    participant Validate as Validate Job
    participant Version as Version Step
    participant BumpCheck as Bump Check
    participant Guard as First Release Guard
    participant Publish as Publish Job

    Dispatch->>Inputs: Select bump type (patch/minor/major)
    Dispatch->>Validate: Start workflow

    Validate->>Version: Compute version info
    Version-->>Validate: previous_version = 0.0.0 (first release)

    alt previous_version == 0.0.0 (first release)
        Validate->>BumpCheck: Validate bump input (lowercase check)
        BumpCheck-->>Validate: pass (patch/minor/major)
        
        alt bump == patch
            Validate->>Guard: Refuse to open at v0.0.1
            Guard-->>Validate: error (exit 1)
            Note over Validate: Prevents permanent v0.0.1
        else bump == minor
            Validate->>Guard: Allow minor bump
            Note over Validate: Opens at v0.1.0
        else bump == major
            Validate->>Guard: Allow major bump
            Note over Validate: Opens at v1.0.0
        end
    else previous_version != 0.0.0 (subsequent release)
        Validate->>Guard: No first-release guard needed
        Note over Validate: Standard version walk
    end

    Validate->>Publish: Pass version info
    Publish->>Publish: Create release tag

Loading

_{Re-trigger cubic}

[jtroup]

Thanks @johnsca