houseplan-card/docs/DEVELOPMENT.md

Development and deployment

Input support contract

Read docs/TOUCH-SUPPORT.md before changing interaction code.

• View and kiosk must work well on touch and remain release-blocking surfaces.
• Editors are implemented and accepted against a desktop browser with mouse/keyboard first.
• Full editor parity on phones/tablets is not required. If correct touch support is expensive, an intentionally reduced or absent touch path is allowed.
• Every editor feature/spec/code review must classify touch as supported, best-effort/degraded, or not exposed.
• A degradation is valid only when documented in the same change. It may not compromise data integrity, permissions, confirmations or ordinary View.
• Do not add complex gesture state solely to claim touch parity. Prefer a clear desktop recommendation or safe unavailable action over unreliable editing.

Existing touch editor behaviour is not silently disposable: when changing a covered workflow, update its test and documentation explicitly and record why the degradation is accepted.

Local contour in 5 minutes (локальный контур за 5 минут, #633)

Three commands take a fresh Linux sandbox (agent session, WSL, a clean VM) from nothing to a green smoke, a full unit run in parts and a pre-push gate. Each step fits the ≈3-minute limit of one sandbox command; everything is idempotent, so after a timeout or a sandbox restart the same command is simply repeated.

# 1. Worktree + dependencies + Chromium + bundle + one Playwright page.
#    HP_BRANCH picks the branch (taken from origin if it exists there);
#    without it the worktree is a detached origin/dev.
HP_BRANCH=issue/NNN-slug HP_WORKTREE=/tmp/w-NNN bash scripts/sandbox-bootstrap.sh
#    or step by step: worktree | deps | chromium | bundle | check
cd /tmp/w-NNN && node demo/smoke_edge_cases.mjs     # AC2 of #633: green

# 2. The full unit suite in parts that each fit one command.
npm run test:chunk -- 1/6          # builds test-build/, then the first sixth
npm run test:chunk -- 2/6 --no-build
npm run test:chunk -- 3/6 --list   # only print the files of the part

# 3. Push: the pre-push hook runs npm run gate:small for issue/* branches.
git push origin issue/NNN-slug
HP_PREPUSH_GATE=0 git push origin issue/NNN-slug   # explicit opt-out

What each command guarantees:

• scripts/sandbox-bootstrap.sh — the worktree comes from the clone the script lives in (HP_CLONE overrides), npm ci --ignore-scripts runs only when package-lock.json changed (HP_SHARED_NODE_MODULES links a ready node_modules instead), Chromium comes from the npm package @sparticuz/chromium@152.0.0 (the Playwright CDN is closed in the sandbox, the npm registry is not) and gets a shim at every path Playwright expects — a real browser already there is left alone. bundle is npm run bundle:sync; check opens one page in Playwright. The script carries no owner paths and no credentials: pushing is configured separately. Golden frames are still captured only in Linux CI (#455).
• npm run test:chunk -- N/M — test/*.test.mjs sorted by code point, file i goes to part i mod M + 1 (round-robin). Chosen over size-balanced parts so that a file stays in the same part while tests are edited; the M parts together cover every file exactly once (test/test-chunk.test.mjs). The test build runs in every part unless --no-build, so a part is self-contained after a sandbox restart.
• pre-push — see TESTING.md «Локальный набор перед пушем»: on by default for issue/* branches with an executable diff, skipped when the branch diff against origin/dev is class C/D only (review documents, changelogs, bundle), off with HP_PREPUSH_GATE=0, forced for any branch with HP_PREPUSH_GATE=1. gate:small takes minutes; when a push must fit a 3-minute command, run npm run gate:small separately and push with HP_PREPUSH_GATE=0.

Local Windows workstation

The CI contract is Node.js 22 + Python 3.14. Do not use Codex's bundled Node 24 or an unpinned machine Python environment as proof that a release will pass. The pins are not declared twice: node scripts/toolchain-pins.mjs reads them from validate.yml, tests_backend/requirements.txt and the lockfile, and npm run toolchain:check compares the machine with them (#496). .nvmrc and .python-version carry the same values for nvm/uv/pyenv; a test keeps them equal.

The supported native setup is repository-scoped and does not change the machine's default Node, Python or persistent PATH (#557):

# One-time/idempotent setup. Requires uv; installs a verified portable Node 22
# under %LOCALAPPDATA% and Python 3.14 in the dedicated .venv-ci.
.\scripts\windows-toolchain.ps1 setup

# Read-only proof: actual versions and executable/package/browser paths.
.\scripts\windows-toolchain.ps1 check

# Explicit pinned entrypoints for ordinary commands; no accidental PATH tools.
.\scripts\windows-toolchain.ps1 npm run gate:small
.\scripts\windows-toolchain.ps1 python -Arguments @(
  '-m', 'pytest', '-p', 'pytest_asyncio.plugin',
  'tests_backend/test_validation.py', 'tests_backend/test_trails.py',
  'tests_backend/test_trail_recorder.py', '-q'
)
.\scripts\windows-toolchain.ps1 playwright install chromium

The Node archive is selected from the official release index for the major in .nvmrc and checked against Node's SHASUMS256.txt. The script prepends that directory to PATH only for its child process. It never removes an existing venv: if the requested -VenvPath contains another Python minor, setup stops and asks for another path. Playwright remains in its normal shared Windows cache. Install uv once with winget install --id astral-sh.uv --source winget if it is absent; GitHub access still uses the separately installed gh.

WSL2 is optional for the ordinary frontend and pure-backend loop. Keep its clone inside Linux ext4, not under /mnt/c; on a fresh checkout run:

cd ~/houseplan-card
bash scripts/wsl-setup.sh           # idempotent setup in dedicated .venv-ci
bash scripts/wsl-setup.sh --check   # no installation; paths + versions only
bash scripts/wsl-setup.sh --verify  # setup, real HA subset and one golden capture

The script provisions the CI pins (nvm → Node, uv → Python and the HA test stack from tests_backend/requirements.txt, Playwright Chromium from the lockfile). --verify imports Unix-only fcntl and the pinned Home Assistant, runs tests_backend/test_ha_setup.py, builds the card and captures panel-wide-view-light-en under artifacts/golden/; it records elapsed time and the resulting PNG path. HOUSEPLAN_VENV selects another dedicated venv without deleting or rewriting an existing one. WSL is normally early feedback. For an intentional baseline change it may also produce the reviewed candidate with the fail-closed command below; the canonical merge/release proof still lives in GitHub Linux CI at the final exact SHA. It is required only when running the full HA harness locally: current Home Assistant imports the Unix-only fcntl module and cannot start its pytest plugin on native Windows. Keep a WSL clone inside the Linux ext4 filesystem rather than under /mnt/c, otherwise dependency installs become slower. The release CI always runs this harness on Ubuntu and gates the exact tagged commit. Docker Desktop is not currently required. Do not install the full Home Assistant pytest stack natively just for this repository: its pinned lru-dict==1.3.0 first requires Visual Studio Build Tools to compile, but the resulting plugin still cannot run without fcntl.

Useful repo-local Git settings on NTFS (optional for this small repository):

git config core.fsmonitor true
git config core.untrackedCache true

Local repository maintenance (#628)

Owner decision on 2026-09-25: use only a one-time local garbage collection for the Windows clone. This issue does not introduce Git LFS, stop tracking dist/**, remove the committed integration bundle, or rewrite published Git history.

Run the maintenance command only when no Git process is active in the shared clone (all worktrees use the same object database):

git gc --prune=now
git count-objects -vH
git fsck --no-dangling --no-progress

The 2026-09-25 measurement before GC was 26,243 loose objects / 749.84 MiB, 41 packs / 334.55 MiB and 98 garbage entries / 959.60 KiB. After GC it is zero loose objects, two packs / 467.63 MiB, zero tmp_obj_* files, and a clean git fsck. size-pack grew because reachable loose objects moved into packs; the meaningful total (size + size-pack) fell from 1,084.39 MiB to 467.63 MiB, a reduction of 616.76 MiB.

This post-GC value is the #628 monthly-growth baseline. To evaluate AC2 on or after 2026-10-25, run the same GC and count-objects sequence and compare the new size-pack with 467.63 MiB; the accepted upper bound is 487.63 MiB.

Tests

• Frontend: npm test — compiles src/logic.ts+rules.ts (tsconfig.test.json) and runs node:test (test/*.test.mjs). Strict typing: npm run typecheck (tsc --noEmit, part of npm run build).
• Pure backend on native Windows (with no HA plugin autoload): use the explicit python -Arguments @(...) invocation above after setting $env:PYTEST_DISABLE_PLUGIN_AUTOLOAD='1'.
• Full backend (including test_ha_*.py): python -m pytest tests_backend/ -q in CI or WSL/Linux only.
• Junction-limit TS/Python parity (clean, no Home Assistant): npx tsc -p tsconfig.junction-parity.json && node scripts/fix-test-build.mjs && python tests_backend/junction_parity.py --build-dir=test-build/junction-parity. Its dedicated reusable Validate job owns this proof; missing compiled modules fail setup instead of turning into a pytest skip.
• IMPORTANT (audit lesson): the rollup typescript plugin reports a syntax error as a WARNING and still builds the bundle — a truncated file can "pass". That is why the build starts with tsc --noEmit, which fails on such errors. Always build with npm run build, never bare rollup -c.
• The committed bundle changes only in a beta/release candidate (#657). Rollup writes dist/houseplan-card.js, dist/houseplan-assets.json and content-hashed chunks under dist/houseplan-assets/; npm run bundle:sync builds and lays that tree out into the untracked demo copy, and npm run bundle:clean restores the tracked dist/ before an ordinary commit (the commit-msg hook refuses bundle paths without a Release: trailer). The candidate runs npm run bundle:release, which also updates the integration snapshot custom_components/houseplan/frontend. node scripts/bundle-policy.mjs --verify HEAD is the check CI and gate:small run: build integrity always, byte parity with the committed copy only on a commit that changes the bundle or is a candidate; node scripts/bundle-tree.mjs dist custom_components/houseplan/frontend stays the read-only parity check of release automation.
• The first-space/import dialog is a separate houseplan-onboarding-runtime-* chunk. Do not fold it into houseplan-editor-runtime-*: empty-install onboarding is a View prerequisite, while a configured View must request neither lazy runtime until the corresponding user intent.
• 2.5D rendering is a separate iso-scene-render-* chunk. A View with settings.volumetric_view off (#649) must not request it. Its normal import and content-hashed retry must pass the same source-fingerprint handshake before Iso installs atomically; houseplan-assets.json records the graph as lazyIsometricFiles.

Maintenance diagnostics

Labs presentation flags

Labs is an internal, presentation-only runtime in src/labs.ts; it must never gate config/schema migrations, persistence writes, HA services or network requests. ?hp_alpha=1 or #hp_alpha=1&space=<id> enables every experimental capability in the current build and persists 1 in houseplan_card_alpha_v1; hp_alpha=0 disables them and persists 0. Query is applied before hash and the last exact 1/0 wins. The URL is not rewritten, unknown values fail closed for the current resolution, and the legacy hp-labs/houseplan_card_labs_v1 inputs are not read or migrated. Diagnostics expose the boolean window.__hpAlpha together with the frozen sorted window.__hpLabs capability array. Since #649 the registry is empty: 2.5D left alpha for the General settings switch settings.volumetric_view; smokes turn it on with window.__hpTest.setVolumetricView(true).

To add a capability, add one unique lowercase id plus issue and a non-empty summary to LABS_FLAGS, then cover registry validation and the alpha-on active set; invalid or duplicate entries fail closed. Capabilities have no individual public key or version lifetime: the one persisted alpha switch is deliberately indefinite until the owner changes the contract. See docs/ISOMETRIC.md for the current use.

These commands are read-only diagnostics, not release gates:

# Show registered legacy/internal fields or inspect an exported config locally.
npm run audit:config
npm run audit:config -- path/to/houseplan-config.json

# Reproducible synthetic large-house report (seven measured samples + warm-up).
npm run benchmark:large-house -- --samples=7 --warmups=1 --output=artifacts/performance/local.json

# Hidden isometric profile; diagnostic only outside exact-SHA Linux CI.
npm run benchmark:large-house-isometric -- --samples=7 --warmups=1 --output=artifacts/performance/isometric-local.json

# Dense Stage 3 overlay/opening profile; also diagnostic outside exact-SHA Linux CI.
npm run benchmark:isometric-stage3-dense -- --samples=7 --warmups=1 --output=artifacts/performance/isometric-stage3-local.json

# Golden candidates never overwrite reviewed references.
npm run golden:capture
npm run golden:verify
npm run golden:accept -- --reviewed

# Full attested candidate for baseline acceptance. Run only in the ext4 WSL
# clone, on a clean named branch whose HEAD already equals origin/<branch>.
npm run golden:wsl:capture -- --expect-change=<scene-id,scene-id>
npm run golden:accept -- --reviewed --from=artifacts/golden \
  --expect-change=<scene-id,scene-id>

# Docs screenshots whose pixels did not change (a version bump, a refactor):
# re-capture locally, compare decoded RGBA against the committed frames and,
# if every frame is identical, refresh only the manifest fingerprints (#512).
npm run docs:accept -- --identical

Golden frames never show the real card version: the harness sets the test-only seam window.__HP_VERSION_OVERRIDE__ = '0.0.0-golden' before the card is created, so a version bump alone changes no baseline (#512, see demo/golden/README.md).

golden:wsl:capture refuses native Windows, /mnt/c, dirty or detached trees, unpublished/mismatched branch SHAs, stale source fingerprints, toolchain drift, partial matrices, undeclared differences and an insufficient witness floor. It writes artifacts/golden/wsl-attestation.json, which self-hashes the source identity, environment, pinned toolchain, report, every PNG and the acceptance intent. Acceptance verifies the passport again and records it under localAttestation in the baseline index. Copy the printed Baseline-Reviewed-Local: sha256:… line to the baseline commit together with Release:; never add the GitHub Baseline-Reviewed: trailer to the same commit. Push that commit and wait for the full GitHub Validate on its exact SHA before S7/merge. The local path removes the earlier expected-red capture run, not this independent final check. A downloaded golden-images artifact from GitHub stays supported and keeps the existing Baseline-Reviewed: <run URL> provenance.

The config audit performs no network requests and does not rewrite the input. Its registry and lifecycle rules are documented in CONFIG-COMPATIBILITY.md. The blocking performance workflow runs its independent profile pairs in parallel. Inside each pair it captures the base SHA and candidate sequentially on one pinned Chromium/CI runner, applies the same relative and absolute budget, and uploads both reports plus the comparison. This preserves same-machine comparability without serialising the whole matrix beyond the job timeout. A developer-laptop report remains a diagnostic and must not be used to loosen CI limits. See demo/performance/README.md. When the comparison base predates scripts/bundle-sync.mjs, the workflow still builds that exact tree and materializes its fresh bundle through the equivalent legacy copy path. This keeps old stable releases usable as performance baselines without borrowing build output from the candidate. Comparative benchmark launches also pass that target tree as the freshness authority; the ordinary smoke launcher continues to default to the current repository root. Both browser diagnostics require a freshly built/copied demo bundle. Rollup embeds a SHA-256 fingerprint of src/ plus the locked package and Rollup/TypeScript build inputs; benchmark/golden runners fail before capturing anything when demo/srv/assets/houseplan-card.js is stale; demo/bundle-freshness.mjs also verifies every manifest-listed asset hash, so a partially copied tree fails too. Golden commands and the explicit review workflow are documented in demo/golden/README.md.

Build

npm ci                       # once
npm run bundle:sync          # build + entry/manifest/chunks → demo
npm run bundle:budget        # initial View graph within INITIAL_VIEW_GZIP_BUDGET (scripts/bundle-budget.mjs)
npm run bundle:clean         # before an ordinary commit (#657)
npm run bundle:release       # candidate only: also → custom_components/houseplan/frontend
node scripts/bundle-tree.mjs dist custom_components/houseplan/frontend   # candidate parity

Deployment

Installations update themselves through HACS by release tag (PROCESS.md §12: no manual copying into a running Home Assistant); the closed dev stand auto-deploys the dev branch. Access to the owner's instances is not documented here.

Frontend cache and the "empty view"

• The card module URL contains ?v=<VERSION from const.py>. Browsers keep the ES module in memory cache: after deploying new JS bump VERSION in const.py and restart HA, otherwise a plain F5 will keep the old version.
• After a page reload the HA frontend (with kiosk-mode) sometimes leaves the view empty ("InvalidStateError: Transition was aborted", hui-view is not created for 1–2 min). Cured by repeating the SPA navigation: pushState + a location-changed event, or just waiting.

Resource registration and version recovery (#462)

• A writable Lovelace resource registry is the loader authority. Registration returns a typed outcome; a pending or transient first attempt installs the extra_module_url fallback immediately and schedules exactly one retry after Home Assistant reaches running state plus a fixed one-second delay. Listener, timer and retry task must all be cancelled through config-entry unload.

• Runtime registration facts belong in hass.data[DOMAIN] and System Health, not in plan/layout storage. The persistent hard-reload notification is localized from the backend issues translation category and its config-entry flag is written only after persistent_notification.async_create returns without an exception.

• Every successful houseplan/config/get is authoritative for integration_version. A missing, non-string or whitespace-only value clears a previously known version. The full-card version controller stays in the initial View graph; do not move it behind the lazy editor runtime or add it to houseplan-space-card.

• Targeted checks while changing this contract are:

  python -m pytest tests_backend/test_ha_frontend_registration.py tests_backend/test_ha_setup.py -q
  npx tsc -p tsconfig.test.json
  node scripts/fix-test-build.mjs
  node --test test/version-recovery.test.mjs
  node demo/smoke_version_recovery.mjs
  node scripts/check-docs.mjs
  

  The full HA pytest harness requires Linux/WSL; native Windows lacks fcntl.

The stylesheet minifier sees TypeScript output, not the source (#526)

scripts/css-template-minifier.mjs runs as a Rollup transform, and by then the module has already been through TypeScript. The TS printer puts a space between a tag and its template, so the source css… arrives as `css `….

The plugin used to look for the exact string css + backtick and therefore returned null for every stylesheet in the project: minification never ran once, and roughly 23 KB of explanatory comments were shipped to every user — 12.8 KB gzipped in the initial chunk.

Two consequences for anyone touching this area:

• match the tag as a word followed by optional whitespace, never as a literal two-character string;
• the guard that keeps this honest is not inside the plugin but in test/bundle-assets.test.mjs: it takes real comment text out of src/styles/*.ts and asserts none of it appears in dist/**. A plugin that silently stops working cannot pass it.

Do not animate container-relative properties on the plan (#524)

A CSS property whose value is expressed in container query units — cqw, cqh, or any custom property derived from them, such as --dev-size — must not appear in a transition on elements the plan draws in quantity.

Container query styles are re-evaluated whenever the container's inline size changes: a tooltip, a scrollbar, a rotation, a panel resize. Every such re-evaluation produces a new computed value and therefore restarts the transition on every one of those elements at once.

That is how box-shadow on device markers cost a real user 9.4 frames per second in Firefox 155: sixty-one markers started a 150 ms non-composited shadow transition four times in two seconds, and the refresh driver spent the window waiting for paint. Chromium starts exactly the same transitions — it merely pays less for them, which is why the defect hid there.

The witness is browser-independent and lives in demo/smoke_marker_shadow_transitions.mjs: change the stage container width by one pixel and assert that no transitionrun for box-shadow arrives.

Updating a pinned Action (#556)

Every uses: in .github/workflows/** is a full commit SHA with the human version in a trailing comment; node scripts/action-pins.mjs enforces it and the Validate preflight runs it. The comment is not decoration — it is the only thing that tells a reader which release they audited.

To move a pin: read what the tag points at today,

gh api repos/<owner>/<repo>/commits/<tag> -q .sha

read the delta from the currently pinned SHA, then change both the SHA and the comment in one commit. node scripts/action-pins.mjs --list prints every third-party action with its pin, which is the fastest way to see what is behind.

Two of these are branches upstream, not releases — home-assistant/actions (master) and hacs/action (main) — so their comment carries the date the branch head was read. They have no tags to follow; the only honest record is "this commit, read on this day".

Moving the runner image (#658)

Every job that runs on a GitHub runner names an explicit image version in runs-on:, and all workflows name the same one; test/workflow-hygiene.test.mjs rejects a floating label such as ubuntu-latest and any drift between files. The reason is the evidence tied to the image: golden baselines, documentation screenshots and performance budgets were captured on it with the pinned Playwright/Chromium (#455, #557), and Chromium's system libraries come from the image itself (the install steps deliberately skip --with-deps). A floating label moves under that evidence — ubuntu-latest becomes Ubuntu 26 from 2026-10-19 (actions/runner-images#14748) — and would turn a day with no change into mass golden different and a red performance smoke.

Move the image on purpose, as its own infra issue:

1. change runs-on: in every workflow in one commit;
2. capture golden in CI on the new image and accept the differences with review (npm run golden:accept -- --reviewed …), re-capture the documentation screenshots (demo/docs/capture.mjs);
3. run the full Validate and performance.yml, and recalibrate a budget only with measured evidence next to the number (the #483 and #675 pattern);
4. mirror the thin callers into main (see workflow_sync in validate.yml) and remember that release.yml, performance.yml and the other files main executes pick the new image up only with the next stable promotion.

The same test requires timeout-minutes on every runner job (at most 180; the default is 360) and keeps cron off minutes 0/15/30/45, which GitHub's scheduler delays by hours. A job that waits for other runs, such as the release gate, gets a timeout above the sum of its own waits and says so in a comment.

What the review model is allowed to do (#556)

The model_review job is the only untrusted stage of the review pipeline: it runs a model with Read/Write/Bash over the material. Its permissions: block is the real ceiling only because the Review step is handed github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}.

Without that input claude-code-action exchanges the job's OIDC token for its own GitHub App installation token (src/github/token.ts), and that exchange defaults to contents: write, pull_requests: write, issues: write no matter what the calling job declared — the ghs_… token then sits in the environment of the model's own Bash tool. Removing the one line therefore widens the model's rights silently, with every test still green, which is why there is a witness (test/review-doc-guard.test.mjs) and a mutant (review-job-trusts-the-app-token) standing on it.

issues: write is the single write scope the model keeps, because the process asks the reviewer for the verdict comment (§7.2) and a separate issue for out-of-scope Medium findings (§12). It buys comments, labels and issue-body edits — not a commit, not a merge (that is decided in integrate from the sealed verdict.json), not a release. Dropping it means moving both duties into integrate, which is a pipeline change and not part of this one.

Dependency and cache gotchas

• polygon-clipping is a trap: its .d.ts declares named exports but the ESM build has only a default export — tsc or the runtime breaks, whichever you appease. Use polyclip-ts (proper ESM + native types; same results, +~50 KB bundle via bignumber.js).
• Redeploying the same version keeps the resource URL (/houseplan_files/houseplan-card.js?v=X), so browsers may serve the previous bundle from cache. Bump the version for anything users must pick up, or hard-refresh (Ctrl+Shift+R) when testing a hotfix redeploy.
• CSS filter: blur() on an SVG group is applied in name only in Chromium: getComputedStyle returns blur(1px), and the rendered result changes by a couple of hundred pixels on a whole plan — i.e. not at all. Use an SVG <filter> with feGaussianBlur and filterUnits="userSpaceOnUse". One filter over the light layer costs about a fifth of one blurred mask per source (60 sources: 66 ms vs 206 ms).
• A geometry cache must be keyed by the geometry, not by _cfgEpoch. The epoch lags behind edits made in place (boundary/opening tools mutate the space object), and a stale barrier set is invisible: the plan keeps lighting through a wall that already exists. _lightBarriers hashes its own inputs instead, and the same fingerprint keys the per-source region cache.
• Segments that cross must be split before a visibility sweep. The sweep casts a ray at every barrier ENDPOINT; two faces crossing in their middles — normal where wall bodies meet at a junction — leave that corner unsampled and the fan closes it with a chord, so a sliver of floor next to a corner the lamp plainly sees goes dark. splitAtIntersections removes the whole class.

Release

This section is the only home of the release mechanics; docs/STATUS.md, docs/ARCHITECTURE.md, AGENTS.md and CONTRIBUTING.md link here instead of retelling it. The process side — when an issue closes, what a stable commit may contain, the independent line review — is PROCESS.md §2.8, §3 and §11.5.

The shape in one paragraph: a pre-release is one tested dev commit and tag with prerelease=true, published from dev; main stays untouched. A stable release fast-forwards main to the exact tested dev SHA and is produced only by release.yml. Installations then update through HACS by tag («Deployment» above); the dev stand takes the head of dev from the dev-build branch (demo/stand/README.md).

Primary prerelease path

Prepare the candidate as usual: synchronize every version field, add dated RU and EN changelog sections, update the production bundle snapshots with npm run bundle:release (since #657 the only commit that may change them; it carries the Release: trailer) and write the short bilingual body in docs/RELEASE-NOTES.md. That file is the one current instance of the canonical ## Основное / ## Highlights template; its two changelog links must be pinned to the new tag.

After the candidate commit is pushed to dev and its exact-SHA Validate is green, publication is one command:

npm run release:prerelease -- v1.61.0-beta.4 --issues=63,64 --yes

Omit --yes for an interactive tag confirmation. Use the same fail-closed preflight without creating a tag or release with:

npm run release:check -- v1.61.0-beta.4 --issues=63,64

The orchestrator requires a clean, synchronized dev, byte-identical bundle snapshots and a completed green Validate for HEAD; like release.yml, it refuses a candidate without the Release: trailer and a committed bundle whose embedded source fingerprint differs from the tree. Snapshot hashes and the uploaded standalone JS are read from the exact Git blobs rather than checkout bytes, so Windows CRLF conversion cannot disagree with the LF-tagged archive. The archive command additionally forces core.autocrlf=false for that one operation; it does not modify the developer's Git configuration. It creates or verifies an annotated exact-SHA tag, builds houseplan.zip directly from that committed tree, verifies its manifest and embedded frontend against the candidate hash, and creates RELEASE-MEMBERSHIP.json. Every explicitly supplied issue must have an Issue: #NN trailer in the candidate history since the previous release; issue authorship is irrelevant. The prerelease is staged as a draft and receives both installable assets, the membership manifest and their SHA256SUMS passport. Only then does it become public. The downloaded public bytes and membership are verified against the candidate, followed by the paginated HACS order and manifest-driven issue bookkeeping. Nothing else re-uploads assets after publication (#540): the bytes it verified are the bytes that stay. Re-running the same command after a partial failure is safe when the checkout still points to the tagged candidate: stale assets are repaired, while a hidden per-release comment marker, manifest membership and postcondition check make comment, status-label removal and close individually repeatable (#547). ZIP inspection is implemented in Node and does not depend on the host's tar/unzip variant. A per-tag local lock and GitHub workflow concurrency reject parallel runs; the local lock is removed on normal exit and on handled SIGHUP/SIGINT/SIGTERM interruption (SIGKILL cannot be handled by any process).

Publish prerelease in GitHub Actions is the browser/button equivalent. Select the dev branch and enter the exact tag. It performs the same contract and draft-first publication entirely on GitHub, including both assets. Prereleases are intentionally silent in Telegram; only stable releases are announced. GitHub exposes a workflow_dispatch button only after the workflow file exists on the default branch; until the next promotion to main, use the local command. The workflow snapshots the current S8 candidates before publication, then retains only issues proven by Git history in the pinned SHA. Its close-merged job consumes that immutable manifest after public asset verification, so work merged later remains open and an accepted external issue is treated like an owner-authored one. A retry reuses the published manifest and resumes bookkeeping even when the release is already public (#120, #547).

Independent line review (#638, PROCESS.md §11.5). Right after the candidate SHA is pinned, the independent-review job of release.yml queues .github/workflows/release-review.yml on dev for the same tag and SHA. It reviews every product surface changed since the previous stable tag against docs/SCOPE.md and docs/USER-GUIDE.ru.md — without specs or review rounds — and publishes docs/reviews/RELEASE-REVIEW-vX.Y.Z.md to dev. It runs in parallel and never blocks the release: no release job needs it, a failure is a warning, and the findings are the owner's call. Manual run: gh workflow run release-review.yml --ref dev -f tag=vX.Y.Z; a repeat for a tag whose document already exists is skipped unless -f force=true.

Stable releases go through .github/workflows/release.yml, the only publisher of installable assets (#540). Run it with workflow_dispatch on main with the exact tag: when the tag does not exist yet it is created on the main tip; when it exists, its commit is the candidate. The workflow resolves the tag to its exact commit, requires the Release: <tag> trailer on it, checks the release contract (release-contract.mjs --stable) and requires a complete Validate proof for its SHA and Git tree (#541). The proof is tied to the workflow run ID and attempt and lists both the requested checks and the jobs that actually executed. A skipped heavy job counts only when its content-addressed reuse marker names an independently verified successful source job. Since #573 the proof also carries composite evidence: the identity of the product tree (every tracked path except the accepted golden overlay demo/golden/baselines/**), the overlay itself (its Git tree, the SHA-256 of baselines-index.json and either the run named by the commit's Baseline-Reviewed: trailer or the attestation hash stored by a Baseline-Reviewed-Local: commit) and the content key of every reusable job, executed or reused. Release consumers standing on the candidate checkout (release-gate.mjs, release-prerelease.mjs) recompute all of it locally and fail closed on any mismatch, on a reused marker whose key is not the candidate's, and on a declared review run that does not exist, was cancelled or is not a Validate run; a proof without the block is stale for them. Review and merge consumers pass no expectations, do not query the declared review run and keep the #541 semantics unchanged. The practical consequence is the beta.3 path: a candidate red only in golden, then a baseline-only commit that reuses smoke, performance smoke, parity and backend from the candidate's green jobs, skips every caught witness in the mutation ledger and re-runs golden, preflight and frontend only. Review, merge and release use the same missing / pending / cancelled / stale / failed state machine. A cancelled or light run is not a release verdict. The newest compatible full run is the verdict: a later failed full run blocks an older green proof, while a later cancelled, light or otherwise stale run is skipped because it does not answer the same release policy. A later complete green full run can refresh an older failure (#511, #619, #656). The release also requires Full Performance and a green E2E run on a real Home Assistant — e2e-gate.mjs --ref=<sha> dispatches e2e.yml in Matysh/houseplan-e2e on the candidate commit, whose custom_components/houseplan tree the suite installs from the codeload tarball (#514, #540) — then builds once, archives houseplan.zip from that same tree (git archive <sha>:custom_components/houseplan, deterministic), writes SHA256SUMS, uploads everything into a draft, publishes, downloads the public assets back and checks them against the passport, and only then announces. Before staging, a stable release also runs npm run continuity:screencast: the CDP compositor screencast fails the run on an empty or black presented frame and uploads the failed frames as continuity-screencast. The tree hash printed in the run summary is the identity between what E2E installed and what HACS downloads.

Publishing a stable release by hand in the GitHub form still works, but fail-closed: release: published starts the same workflow, which immediately turns the release back into a draft and walks the same path; nothing installable is public while the gates run. A red gate leaves the draft in place — open the linked run, the Playwright traces and screenshots are in its artifacts; fix, then cut a new tag. Re-dispatching the workflow on an already public tag is a repair: the gates run again on the SHA, missing assets are added, and an existing asset whose hash differs from the rebuilt one fails the run instead of being replaced. Hand-published betas are ignored by this workflow — prereleases have their own staged path above. Bump the version in every source scripts/release-contract.mjs reads (parseVersionSources: package.json, package-lock.json, the integration manifest.json and const.py, CARD_VERSION in the card and in the editor runtime); the snapshot table in docs/STATUS.md reports whether they agree.

Validate intentionally runs on branch pushes, not tag pushes, so an annotated release tag does not duplicate the expensive browser/performance matrix; a new push cancels an unfinished Validate for the same branch, and the gates accept only a completed run for the exact SHA, never "the last green one". Every tagged SHA must therefore already be pushed to a branch and have a completed green full exact-SHA Validate proof. For an owner-approved emergency hotfix, push a temporary hotfix/* branch and wait for Validate before creating the tag; never tag a detached or otherwise unpushed commit, because the release gate will wait for a run that cannot exist and then fail closed after one hour.

The GitHub Release body is a concise bilingual user summary, not a copy of the exhaustive changelog. Put Russian first and English second, with equivalent meaning in both sections. Give separate bullets only to significant features and user-visible behaviour changes. Collapse minor fixes, visual polish, refactors, tests and purely internal improvements into one final bullet: Мелкие исправления и улучшения. / Small fixes and improvements. Keep the body short because HACS displays it inside Home Assistant and concatenates the bodies of skipped releases. The full detail remains in both docs/CHANGELOG.ru.md and docs/CHANGELOG.md; finish every release body with two explicit links, one to each language version of the changelog.

A stable body aggregates the changelog since the previous stable release, never since the last beta (#328, owner rules 2026-08-27): everything the line's beta changelogs describe reaches it, while a bug introduced and fixed strictly inside the beta line — never shipped in any stable — stays out. Every bullet links its GitHub issue so the rules stay machine-checkable. Draft with npm run release:notes -- <tag> (it lists each candidate item with its source section so the curator can strike in-line-only fixes), curate by hand, then npm run release:notes -- <tag> --verify must pass. The small-fixes bullet is allowed only when the range really contains user-visible work the body does not itemise; a single-issue hotfix ships without it (the verifier enforces this). Open or partially delivered issues are never presented as shipped.

Changelog entries may link directly to a closed GitHub Issue when that issue is the canonical task for the shipped change. Append a normal Markdown link such as ([#55](https://github.com/Matysh/houseplan-card/issues/55)) to the relevant bullet in both language changelogs. Keep this optional: do not invent issues for minor work, do not link open or partially delivered issues, and do not expand the grouped small-fixes bullet into an issue inventory.

<!-- release: vX.Y.Z -->

## Основное
- Значимое изменение.
- Исправлена конкретная проблема ([#123](https://github.com/Matysh/houseplan-card/issues/123)).
- Мелкие исправления и улучшения.

## Highlights
- Significant change.
- Fixed a specific problem ([#123](https://github.com/Matysh/houseplan-card/issues/123)).
- Small fixes and improvements.

[Полный список изменений на русском](https://github.com/Matysh/houseplan-card/blob/vX.Y.Z/docs/CHANGELOG.ru.md)
· [Full changelog in English](https://github.com/Matysh/houseplan-card/blob/vX.Y.Z/docs/CHANGELOG.md)

The literal ## Основное and ## Highlights headings above are the canonical release-body format. Do not maintain a second ## Русский / ## English template in scripts or release notes; change this single template if the product format changes again.

Replace vX.Y.Z with the release tag so the links remain pinned to the published version instead of drifting with dev or main.

Local release gates are deliberately different. A pre-release runs npm run build plus only the unit tests and browser smokes selected for the changed surfaces; record the exact selection in the release handoff. A stable release runs the complete local frontend, backend and smoke gates before its tag is created. The exact-SHA Validate required by release.yml remains in force for both and can run a broader matrix automatically; the local policy does not weaken the publication guard.

Feature promotion has an additional hard gate: every new feature or material behaviour change must spend at least one published beta/RC before stable. A stable release commit may change only version fields, generated bundle snapshots and changelog/release metadata; feature source changes belong in the preceding pre-release commit. Skip this step only for an explicit owner-approved emergency hotfix, and document the exception in the handoff. A Release vX.Y.Z-beta.N candidate commit is not promotion-only: it carries the work itself and follows the ordinary rules, trailers included.

Smoke tests (since 2026-07-27)

Every demo/smoke_*.mjs ends with:

checkAll(out);            // every key must be true...
checkAll(out, { n: 4 });  // ...unless an expected value is given
await finish(browser, out);

finish prints the JSON dump (useful on failure), reports named mismatches and sets a non-zero exit code — including when the card threw during the run. The suite runs in CI (smoke job) against a freshly built bundle; never test the demo/srv/assets/houseplan-card.js copy, which npm run bundle:sync writes and which is not committed (#255).

updateComplete proves only that Lit finished its own update. Pointer-owned editor state can be painted later by live-editor, outside that cycle. Browser checks which read live editor DOM must await the lazy runtime's _whenLiveEditorSettled() contract; a timeout, sleep or fixed number of RAFs is not evidence that the latest projection was applied. If a smoke changes editor mode before dispatching synthetic gestures, it must also wait for the observable mode-transition and viewport-refit state to settle, because the stage can finish its physical resize after the Lit update (#460).

When adding a checklist line marked [auto: ...] in docs/TESTING.md, add the failing check in the same commit — that is what the marker now promises.

The fake hass in demo/srv/demo.html is set once: opened directly in a browser, the page renders the plan but device icons appear only after a re-render (F5, or card.hass = {...card.hass}). demo/serve.mjs does that nudge for smokes; a plain browser session does not. It is a harness limitation, not a card bug.

Known environment-sensitive smoke: demo/smoke_opening_measure.mjs fails two sub-checks (place_dialog_x_magnetised, place_committed_x_center) under the pinned Chromium — a 1e-6-tolerance magnet snap on the opening placement path. It reproduces against the pristine committed bundle: pre-existing pixel precision, not a regression of the change under test.