FOR MAINTAINERS — HOW THE KIT SHIPS

Release & update cycle

The kit installs from this repo's GitHub marketplace (private, @develop). The plugin updater dedups by version: if plugin.json still says the version you already have, claude plugin update is a silent no-op. That made manual version bumps the #1 way updates got lost.

The automated cycle (#208)

1. A PR touching packages/claude-kit-plugin/** merges to develop.
2. The plugin-autobump workflow fires: it increments the beta prerelease (0.7.0-beta.N → beta.N+1) across all version fields — plugin.json, both marketplace.json files, package.json — and inserts a dated CHANGELOG entry from the merged PR's title.
3. It opens a bot PR (chore/plugin-bump-<version> [plugin-bump]), dispatches CI on it (bot PRs don't fire pull_request events), and enables auto-merge.
4. CI green → the bump lands. The [plugin-bump] marker stops the workflow from re-firing on its own merge.

Picking the update up in a project

claude plugin update claude-kit@claude-kit-marketplace

Then skim CHANGELOG.md and run /kit-update in each scaffolded project to merge-upgrade its .claude/ without clobbering customizations.

Edge cases

• Two plugin merges back-to-back → two bump PRs that conflict on the version fields. Merge the first, close the second (the next merge re-bumps), or rebase it.
• Stable releases (dropping -beta) stay manual: edit the version fields by hand in a normal PR titled with [plugin-bump] so the bot skips it.