Releasing Kipp

The release pattern established by v0.0.1–v0.0.4 is a release branch, a single Release vX.Y.Z commit, a GitHub PR merged into main with a merge commit, and an annotated tag on that merge. Everything below must be green before the branch is cut.

Pre-release checklist

1. Gates, recorded. On the release candidate commit, on real hardware:
   • make test (hermetic units, docs drift, and tooling tests) and make test-sanitize (ASan/UBSan).
   • CPU model gates via the built binary: --model, --phase2-model, --multilogit, --paged-cpu, --pooled-cpu, --fault-reference.
   • Metal gates: --metal-operators, --phase3-metal, --paged-metal, --multilogit-metal, --pooled-metal, --longctx-metal.
   • CUDA gates on an ephemeral cloud GPU: KIPP_VERDA_CONFIRM_COST=yes KIPP_VERDA_SSH_KEY_ID=... \ tools/ops/verda_cuda_gate.sh 2>&1 | tee cuda-gate-$(date +%Y%m%d).log then python3 tools/ops/collect_cuda_gates.py <log> and commit the resulting bench/results/cuda-*-gates.json.
   • State plainly which backends were exercised on which hardware.
2. Server suite: make test-server (40+ tests) against a freshly built server binary.
3. Benchmarks current: any result file whose code path changed this release is re-measured under the steady-state protocol (bench/README.md) and committed with dirty: false.
4. CHANGELOG: retitle ## Unreleased to ## vX.Y.Z (YYYY-MM-DD).
5. Version bump: update KIPP_VERSION in src/kipp.h.
6. Docs: ROADMAP status block describes the release; drift check grep -rn "not yet wired" docs src *.md returns only intended lines; make docs && make docs-check green.

Release mechanics

git checkout -b release/vX.Y.Z          # from the validated branch tip
# apply items 4-5 above in one commit:
git commit -m "Release vX.Y.Z: <one-line summary>"
git push -u origin release/vX.Y.Z
gh pr create --base main --title "Release vX.Y.Z" --body "<summary + gate results>"
gh pr merge --merge                      # merge commit, matching PRs #1/#2
git checkout main && git pull
git tag -a vX.Y.Z -m "Kipp vX.Y.Z: <summary>"
git push origin vX.Y.Z

Post-merge

• CI on main runs make test; verify the native, tooling, and docs-drift gates pass on the merge commit.
• Do not regenerate or prune bench/results/ in the release commit.
• Verify the tag points at the merge commit and the GitHub release page (if drafted) links the CHANGELOG section.