release: the check of a published release answers with every question, not the first

[donislawdev]

The job that checks a published release stopped at the first red step, so the questions behind it were never asked and nothing said so.

Measured on the v0.2.0 publish, 2026-08-28

22:22:46  the SBOM attestation is made   - success
22:35:48  the release is published
22:35:50  this job runs                  - failure

Not a race - the attestation existed thirteen minutes before the publish.

step	outcome
the two commands the notes tell people to run	success
the same two commands with no network to the API	failure
every Windows program is signed, stamped, and by OUR certificate	skipped
the page promises what was just checked	skipped
a full release has to be the one people are offered	skipped

Three questions about a published release went unasked, and the run reported one problem. One of the three would have gone red as well: the published notes carry none of the three sentences the notes step looks for, measured the same way.

That turns a list into a queue, and every trip round the queue costs a publish. This is the rule a recipe already follows when it refuses, RC7, applied to the one gate standing over what strangers download.

What changes

Each check carries continue-on-error and an id, and a final step reads all seven and decides.

It reads outcome rather than conclusion. continue-on-error rewrites conclusion to success and leaves outcome alone, so a verdict reading conclusion would pass however the checks went - a gate that cannot fail, which is worse than the problem being fixed.

The macOS job is left alone. It has a single check, so there is nothing for a first failure to hide.

Guard

TestNoReleaseCheckCanHideTheOnesBehindIt holds every step between the download and the verdict to being collected into it, so a check added later cannot quietly go back to covering for the ones behind it. It also refuses a verdict that reads conclusion, and one with no way to fail.

Three mutations, all caught: a check that stops the job, a verdict reading conclusion, and a verdict that stops running after a red check.

Checks

preflight --quick green on all twelve, tools/probes/workflow-shell.py clean on every run: step, staleness clean at 730 entries.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code