Release process

The beta branch is the default branch and receives development changes. The stable branch holds the latest monthly release.

The monthly release workflow runs at 09:00 UTC on the first day of each month. It opens or updates a pull request from beta into stable. The pull request title uses this format: Release vYYYY.MM. For example, the October 2026 release uses Release v2026.10. Maintainers can also run the Open monthly release PR workflow manually.

Merge the release pull request to publish the release. The workflow creates a GitHub release and a Git tag on the merge commit. The published release event starts the Docker build. The build publishes the stable image tag and a versioned image such as ghcr.io/games-on-whales/wolf:v2026.10. The beta image tag represents a Docker build from the beta branch.

Create a fine-grained personal access token for the games-on-whales/wolf repository. Grant it Contents: Read and write access. Store it in the GH_RELEASE_PAT repository secret.