docs agent failed: release notes listed commits already in the previo

Not specified by the original author.

TL;DR

Check whether the release already exists before creating it, and serialize publishes so two runs cannot race. The agent published twice because creating was unconditional. An existence check turns the second publish into a no-op or an update.

docs agent failed: double-published the same release notes

Steps

1. Confirm the duplicate: list releases (gh release list or your forge's release page) and look for two entries with the same tag or version. Note which one is the duplicate.
2. Remove the duplicate: delete the extra release (keeping the tag if the tag itself is correct) or merge its notes into the surviving release. Expected: exactly one release per version.
3. Add the existence check to the agent: before publishing, the agent looks up the tag/version; if it exists, it updates the existing release in place instead of creating a new one. Expected: a rerun of the same publish step reports "already exists" and changes nothing.
4. Serialize the publish step: give the agent's release job a concurrency limit of one (a lock file, a CI concurrency group, or a single publisher run at a time). Expected: two overlapping runs can no longer both pass the existence check and both publish.
5. Rerun the publish flow end to end on a test version and confirm only one release appears. Expected: one release, one set of notes.

Use this when

• the same release notes appear twice for one version
• an agent publish step is not safe to rerun
• two agent runs can overlap on release day

Not for this skill when

• the notes are wrong but published once (content bug)
• duplicates were created by hand
• you publish separate notes per platform on purpose

Variant phrasings

• release notes published twice for the same version
• duplicate release created by agent
• agent published the changelog entry two times

Why it happens

The publish step was "create release" with no read-before-write, so reruns, retries after a timeout, and overlapping scheduled runs each created a fresh release. The API happily accepts duplicates because nothing told it the version already existed.

Edge cases

• Deleting a release usually keeps the git tag: delete or move the tag too if the duplicate created one.
• A retry that timed out may have actually succeeded: always check existence before retrying any publish.
• Draft releases do not notify but still count as duplicates: include drafts in the existence check.
• If the two duplicates have different notes, merge the content before deleting one.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_Y-47Ou0eb7v12226646VHA

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_Y-47Ou0eb7v12226646VHA

Thread query: docs agent failed: double-published the same release notes

TL;DR: Check whether the release already exists before creating it, and serialize publishes so two runs cannot race. The agent published twice because creating was unconditional. An existence check turns the second publish into a no-op or an update.

Not specified by the original author.

TL;DR

Fix the tag range: generate from the previous release tag (exclusive) to the new tag (inclusive). Duplicates mean the range started one tag too early.

Error

(release notes for v2.1.0 list commits already released in v2.0.0; no error text)

Steps

1. Identify the range the writer used: check the job logs or config for the from/to refs. Expected: the actual range, e.g. v1.9.0..v2.1.0 instead of v2.0.0..v2.1.0.
2. Correct it to start after the previous release: git log v2.0.0..v2.1.0 lists exactly the new commits. Expected: the range covers only new work.
3. Watch for tag weirdness: lightweight vs annotated tags, and tags on the wrong branch, both shift ranges silently. Verify with git tag --list and git log --oneline on the range. Expected: the range contains exactly the intended commits.
4. Regenerate the notes from the corrected range. Expected: no duplicates.

When to use

• Release notes repeat the previous release's commits
• A docs agent picks the range itself
• Tags were recreated or moved

When not to use

• Commits are genuinely new but look similar (not duplicates)
• The notes miss commits (a range that starts too late)
• You intentionally include prior context (mark it as such)

Tool compatibility

Git-based changelog tools (conventional-changelog, release-please, semantic-release) and custom writers.

Variant phrasings

duplicates after a hotfix tag

Hotfix tags between releases confuse range pickers. Anchor the range on the actual previous release tag.

agent uses dates instead of tags

Date ranges overlap across releases. Switch to tag ranges.

Why it happens

Range selection is usually "latest N tags" or a guessed previous tag. Any off-by-one in tag ordering pulls the previous release's commits into the new notes.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pstdUmBuXDf-CqeyCdL9gA

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pstdUmBuXDf-CqeyCdL9gA

Thread query: docs agent failed: release notes listed commits already in the previous release

TL;DR: Fix the tag range: generate from the previous release tag (exclusive) to the new tag (inclusive). Duplicates mean the range started one tag too early.

Not specified by the original author.

TL;DR

When an agent run to generate release notes hits this failure - context limit error failed the run - do not retry the same step blindly. First check the real state in the release tooling to learn whether the step already took effect, then shrink what the run carries: move release state to files and API reads instead of conversation history, summarise or drop build logs to their error lines, and split the release into staged steps that hand off a short state summary, so the run finishes well inside the context limit. That sequence prevents duplicate uploads, corrupted release state and silent half-finished releases.

agent context overflow during generate release notes: context limit error failed the run

Use this when

• An automated release run to generate release notes failed with this pattern.
• The workflow uses the release tooling and the failure appeared mid-run, after earlier steps may already have applied.
• You are hardening a mobile release agent before its next unattended run.

Not for this skill when

• A human running the same step manually in a terminal or console succeeds. That points at the underlying tool, not the agent wrapper.
• The store rejected the release on policy or metadata grounds. That is a store review issue, not an agent reliability failure.

Steps

1. Reconstruct what the run had already done from store state and any logs, since the dead run cannot summarise itself. Verify: completed steps are listed from external evidence
2. Move release state out of the conversation: a state file holding build numbers, statuses and completed steps that each stage reads and updates. Verify: the state file exists and a fresh stage can resume from it
3. Trim log handling: keep error lines and summaries from build and upload logs instead of pasting full logs into the run. Verify: a test run stores a log summary a fraction of the full log size
4. Split the release into stages with a short written handoff between them: state file path, current status, next step. Verify: each stage ends by updating the handoff in the state file
5. Fetch store metadata on demand per stage instead of loading every locale and asset into context at the start. Verify: stages read only the metadata they act on
6. Re-run the workflow to generate release notes in the staged shape. Verify: the run completes and its peak context stays well below the limit
7. Record the fix in the release runbook or the CI job notes, naming the error, the value or setting that changed, and the date, so the next release engineer does not re-diagnose it from scratch. Verify: the runbook or job notes contain an entry for this error that a teammate can find by searching the error text

Why it happens

Release runs accumulate huge context: full build logs, store metadata for every locale, and long polling histories. Once the window fills, the run dies mid-release with earlier steps applied and no summary of what happened, which is worse than a clean early failure.

In practice this failure is rarely a one-off. It tends to recur at the worst point in the release cycle, when a certificate, a toolchain, a store policy or a team process has quietly changed since the last successful release and nobody connected that change to the release pipeline. That is why the steps above insist on reading the actual store, portal or build state at each point instead of trusting configuration files or memory: the configuration usually describes the release the team intended to ship, while this error describes the release the systems actually see. Once the immediate upload or build is unblocked, treat the underlying drift as the real defect. Pin the toolchain version, expiry date, identifier or policy value that caused it in the release checklist, and add the cheapest automatic check that would have caught it before submission day, for example a preflight lane that validates signing, versions and metadata lengths before the full archive runs. A release pipeline that fails in preflight costs minutes; the same failure discovered at submission costs a day.

Variants and edge cases

agent failed to generate release notes reliability playbook

The workflow-hardening phrasing: state checks, budgets and resumability for this step. When you land on this skill from that phrasing, start at step 1 rather than jumping to the most dramatic fix: the early steps are cheap state checks that confirm you are solving the failure you actually have, and they take minutes compared with a rebuild or a store-side change you cannot undo.

the release tooling agent workflow failure recovery

The recovery phrasing: establish real store state first, then resume without duplicating applied steps. When you land on this skill from that phrasing, start at step 1 rather than jumping to the most dramatic fix: the early steps are cheap state checks that confirm you are solving the failure you actually have, and they take minutes compared with a rebuild or a store-side change you cannot undo.

Edge case: partial application

The hardest variant of every agent failure is the half-applied release. Always reconcile store state before resuming, even when the log looks clean. When you land on this skill from that phrasing, start at step 1 rather than jumping to the most dramatic fix: the early steps are cheap state checks that confirm you are solving the failure you actually have, and they take minutes compared with a rebuild or a store-side change you cannot undo.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pstt5VBKCdHafk5yhOI9uR8A

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pstt5VBKCdHafk5yhOI9uR8A

Thread query: agent context overflow during generate release notes: context limit error failed the run

TL;DR: When an agent run to generate release notes hits this failure - context limit error failed the run - do not retry the same step blindly. First check the real state in the release tooling to learn whether the step already took effect, then shrink what the run carries: move release state to files and API reads instead of conversation history, summarise or drop build logs to their error lines, and split the release into staged steps that hand off a short state summary, so the run finishes well inside the context limit. That sequence prevents duplicate uploads, corrupted release state and silent h