Release process

ZEngine maintains two release tracks.

Track	Branch	Purpose
Development candidate	develop	Produces release candidates while active development continues.
Stable	main	Produces the stable release PR, tag, changelog, and platform artifacts.

Release automation reads Conventional Commit messages. A release PR updates VERSION.txt, the release manifest, and CHANGELOG.md; merging the approved release PR creates the tag and GitHub release.

Publishing documentation

The documentation website deploys from main when docs/** or mkdocs.yml changes. Documentation changes should therefore be reviewed with a local MkDocs build before they are merged into the stable branch.

Release consumers

Release users install an engine version through Zodiac Engine Hub, rather than building the repository. Each release announcement should link to the release page and the full changelog.

For the repository's detailed automation policy, see CONTRIBUTING.md.