feat(ci): switch release pipeline to homeboy-native release workflow

[chubes4]

Summary

Replace the standalone release-asset.yml workflow with the homeboy continuous-release pattern. On every push to main, check for releasable conventional commits and run homeboy release if any exist. The homeboy release pipeline now handles ZIP packaging and GitHub asset upload natively because the wordpress extension provides release.package and release.publish actions (Extra-Chill/homeboy-extensions#658).

- .github/workflows/release-asset.yml   # custom release-event hook
+ .github/workflows/release.yml          # homeboy continuous release
+ homeboy.json                            # add release_latest_branch config

Before this change

push main → homeboy.yml (audit/lint/test only)
            ↓ (someone runs homeboy release manually)
            git tag pushed + GitHub Release created (no asset)
            ↓ (release:published event)
            release-asset.yml: rebuild ZIP, gh release upload

Three problems:

• Manual release trigger. Someone has to run homeboy release locally to bump version, tag, push.
• Parallel codepath for the ZIP. release-asset.yml rebuilds the ZIP using its own composer/npm install + rsync rules, separate from anything homeboy knows about. State drift between developer builds and release builds.
• Two failure modes to debug. homeboy release failures and release-asset.yml failures have different surfaces.

After this change

push main → release.yml dry-run check
            ↓ (releasable commits since last tag?)
            release.yml release
            ↓
            homeboy release runs the full pipeline:
              changelog.finalize → version → git.commit
              → package (wordpress extension builds ZIP)
              → git.tag → git.push → github.release
              → publish.wordpress (uploads ZIP + mirrors release-latest branch)

Single pipeline, single failure mode, single source of truth for what a release ZIP contains.

The release-latest branch

homeboy.json declares release_latest_branch: "release-latest" in the wordpress extension config. After the GitHub release-asset upload completes, the wordpress extension's release.publish action also force-pushes the unzipped vendor-bundled tree to refs/heads/release-latest. WordPress Playground blueprints can then install via:

{
  "resource": "git:directory",
  "url": "https://github.com/Extra-Chill/data-machine-code",
  "ref": "release-latest",
  "refType": "branch"
}

This bypasses the CORS failure that has been preventing Data Machine Code from installing in browser-based Playground (GitHub release-asset URLs 302 to S3 buckets that don't send Access-Control-Allow-Origin). The world-of-wordpress blueprint will switch to this resource shape once DMC has released once and the release-latest branch exists.

Validation

• New release.yml is yaml-valid and structurally identical to the proven workflow in homeboy-action (the same workflow that has been releasing homeboy-action on every push to main for months).
• homeboy.json extensions.wordpress block follows the schema established in the wordpress extension manifest.
• release-asset.yml was solely responsible for ZIP upload on release:published. The homeboy pipeline now owns that step (verified against homeboy-extensions release pipeline running on every push), so deleting it is safe.
• Manual asset rebuilds remain available via workflow_dispatch on release.yml.

What happens when this merges

The merge commit's message is feat: (this change), so the next push to main triggers a release. Predicted version bump:

• Current: v0.44.0
• Bump: minor (one feat: since last tag)
• New: v0.45.0

The release will:

1. Update data-machine-code.php version targets
2. Generate the changelog entry
3. Push the v0.45.0 tag
4. Create the GitHub Release
5. Build build/data-machine-code.zip
6. Upload it as a release asset
7. Force-push the unzipped tree to release-latest

Dependencies

• Requires feat(wordpress): add release.package and release.publish actions homeboy-extensions#658 (release.package + release.publish actions) — already merged at homeboy-extensions wordpress v2.89.0.
• Requires feat(wordpress): mirror release ZIP to a CORS-friendly branch homeboy-extensions#659 (release-latest branch mirror) — open, needs to merge before the first release cycle if we want the branch to populate immediately. Otherwise the first release uploads only the asset and the next one populates the branch.

AI assistance

• AI assistance: Yes
• Tool(s): Claude Code (Sonnet 4.5)
• Used for: Identified the gap between the custom release-asset workflow and the homeboy-native pipeline, modeled the new release.yml on homeboy-action's release.yml, and drafted the homeboy.json wordpress extension config. Chris confirmed the homeboy gap and chose the recommended scope (replace the standalone workflow, no migration path).

[homeboy-ci]

Homeboy Results — data-machine-code

Lint

✅ lint — passed

Deep dive: homeboy lint data-machine-code --changed-since 1f73d41

Test

✅ test — passed

ℹ️ No impacted tests found for --changed-since 1f73d41
ℹ️ Run full suite if needed: homeboy test data-machine-code
Deep dive: homeboy test data-machine-code --changed-since 1f73d41

Audit

✅ audit — passed

Deep dive: homeboy audit data-machine-code --changed-since 1f73d41

Tooling versions

• Homeboy CLI: homeboy 0.182.0+727d32a
• Extension: wordpress from https://github.com/Extra-Chill/homeboy-extensions
• Extension revision: 4c8e91c
• Action: unknown@unknown