Fix release workflow leaving permanent draft releases on GitHub#1652
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The release workflow was creating a GitHub draft release before goreleaser ran. goreleaser preserves the draft state of releases it didn't create itself, so every release was left as a permanent draft. Removes the pre-goreleaser softprops/action-gh-release step entirely and lets goreleaser own the full lifecycle: create draft, upload assets, publish. Also renames the job from create_release to release_metadata (it only computes tag/version metadata now) and tightens workflow-level permissions from contents:write to contents:read. Change-Type: fix Release-Note: no Audience: operator Impact: medium Breaking: false Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
tashian
approved these changes
Jun 11, 2026
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Summary
softprops/action-gh-releasepre-creation step that was causing goreleaser to leave permanent draft releases on GitHubcreate_releasejob torelease_metadatato reflect that it only computes tag/version metadatacontents: writetocontents: readRoot cause
The workflow was creating a GitHub draft release before goreleaser ran. goreleaser preserves the draft state of releases it didn't create itself — it only un-drafts releases it creates. So every release was left as a permanent draft.
Fix
Lets goreleaser own the full release lifecycle: create draft → upload assets → publish. goreleaser was already configured for this (
draft: falsein.goreleaser.yml); the pre-creation step was always redundant.Test plan
gh release list --repo smallstep/cli🤖 Generated with Claude Code