🚀 Release & Review Process

Guidelines for contributing code, opening pull requests, and creating official releases for Cortex Workstation.

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🤝 Pull Request (PR) Lifecycle

1. Fork & Branch: Create a feature branch off main with a descriptive name (e.g. feat/vss-snapshot-diff or fix/disk-health-nvme).
2. Conventional Commits: Write clean commit messages following Conventional Commits format:
3. feat: add directstorage bypassio filter validator
4. fix: correct mft slack scrubber cluster alignment
5. docs: update subsystem api lifecycle table
6. test: add unit tests for fastcdc gear hash
7. Automated Verification: Before opening your PR, ensure all tests pass:

   python -m compileall -q src tests
   pytest tests/ --no-cov
   python scripts/verify_production_readiness.py
   

8. Code Review: All PRs require passing automated CI workflows and review from repository maintainers before merge.

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📦 Creating a Production Release

1. Update Version: Increment version string in pyproject.toml and src/cortex_unified/__init__.py.
2. Update Changelog: Document new features, enhancements, and fixes in CHANGELOG.md.
3. Build Standalone Binary:

   python scripts/build_exe.py
   

4. Tag & Publish: Create a signed Git tag and push:

   git tag -a v1.2.0 -m "Release v1.2.0"
   git push origin v1.2.0