[KatalKavya96]

Summary

• Add a first-run welcome guide for the Release Management family, covering all 10 skills and introducing the complete release lifecycle through natural-language requests, from release planning and signing-key preparation to RC verification, voting, promotion, announcements, archiving, and audit reporting.
• Explain project-specific configuration, personal setup versus project adoption, and critical safety boundaries: the agent never holds the Release Manager's signing key, never publishes releases autonomously, and never sends vote or announcement emails.
• Integrate the guide into docs/release-management/README.md using the standardized family README layout, add first-run regression tests and a preflight evaluation fixture, regenerate affected reports, and update evaluation case counts.

Type of change

• Skill change (.claude/skills/<name>/) — eval fixtures updated below
• Tool / bridge contract (tools/<system>/*.md)
• Python package (tools/*/ with pyproject.toml)
• Groovy reference impl
• Cross-cutting (RFC, AGENTS.md, sandbox, privacy-LLM)
• Documentation (docs/, README.md, CONTRIBUTING.md)
• Project template (projects/_template/)
• CI / dev loop (prek, workflows, validators)
• Other: Setup-preflight welcome guide, regression tests, and first-run evaluation fixture

Test plan

• prek run --all-files passes
• For Python packages touched: uv run pytest / ruff check / mypy passes
• For Groovy bridges touched: command-line invocation tested end-to-end
• For skill changes: eval suite passes for the affected skill
  (PYTHONPATH=tools/skill-evals/src python3 -m skill_evals.runner tools/skill-evals/evals/<skill>/)
• For skill behaviour changes: a new or updated eval fixture is included in this PR
  (a regression test for the bug fixed / the behaviour added — see CONTRIBUTING.md)
• Other:
  • All 61 welcome regression tests passed.
  • Added case-16-release-management-first-run and verified the generated verdict reports family: release-management and reason: first-run.
  • Verified the fixture uses the actual rc-cut surface hash: sha256:60623e456e72bbf6.
  • Regenerated preflight reports and confirmed zero drift with render-preflight-fixtures.py --check.
  • Verified the rendered guide is 68 lines, within the 70-line limit.
  • Added coverage for family discovery, first-run ordering, guide rendering, and shared-footer substitution.
  • Repository-wide pytest, Ruff check and format, mypy, documentation synchronization, validators, and all other prek hooks passed.

RFC-AI-0004 compliance

• HITL — documents explicit Release Manager confirmation and control over release-state changes, external publication, and repository mutations.
• Sandbox — no new unrestricted host access, signing-key access, runtime permissions, or network capabilities introduced.
• Vendor neutrality — respects project-configured distribution, approval, and announcement backends, without hardcoding ASF-specific execution behavior into the welcome guide.
• Conversational + correctable — provides plain-language requests and guidance for adjusting release policies and adopter-specific workflows.
• Write-access discipline — vote and announcement emails remain drafts; the Release Manager retains responsibility for signing and publication.
• Privacy LLM — not affected by this change.

Linked issues

Closes #1657

Refs #1654

Notes for reviewers (optional)

• Follows the first-run welcome-guide pattern established in feat(setup): first-run welcome guides, general and for the security skills #1653 and feat(setup): first-run welcome guide for the utilities family (#1663) #1669, including the standardized README introduction used across the recently merged families.
• Covers all 10 Release Management skills:
  • prepare
  • keys-sync
  • rc-cut
  • verify-rc
  • vote-draft
  • vote-tally
  • promote
  • announce-draft
  • archive-sweep
  • audit-report
• Documents the configuration boundaries:
  • release-management-config.md for release policy and lifecycle workflows.
  • release-build.md for RC creation and verification.
  • pmc-roster.md for vote tallying and promotion.
• Reuses the existing shared welcome footer and setup-preflight machinery. No production skill behavior, release permissions, signing workflow, or publication controls are changed.
• Adds case-16-release-management-first-run, using rc-cut with surface_hash: sha256:60623e456e72bbf6.
• Updates the setup evaluation count from 135 to 136 and preflight-floor case count from 15 to 16, based on the upstream branch used for this PR.
• Regenerates the general first-run welcome report to include the new Release Management guide.
• Repository-wide validation passed locally.

Concurrent PR note: The Repository Health (#1660), Setup (#1662), and Release Management (#1657) welcome guides were developed from separate upstream branches. Fixture numbering and evaluation counts may need reconciliation as those PRs merge.

AI assistance disclosure: AI assistance was used for repository inspection, implementation drafting, and review. Changes were applied and validated locally by the contributor.

[KatalKavya96]

Hi @potiuk,

I've completed the Release Management family first-run welcome guide for #1657, following the established pattern from the earlier welcome-guide contributions.

It covers all 10 skills, their configuration requirements, and the complete release workflow, from preparation and RC verification to voting, promotion, announcements, and audit reporting.

I've also added the standardized README integration, first-run evaluation fixture, and regression tests. The guide preserves the existing safety boundaries around signing keys, publication, and human approval.

All repository-wide checks passed locally with prek run --all-files.

Thanks!

[potiuk]

Added a few small fixups :)