Agent skill

Nav Release

by qf-studio in qf-studio/navigator

Validate and release Navigator plugin to marketplace. An agent skill from qf-studio/navigator.

MITAuto-check: notesAgent Workflows

Install Nav Release

skills CLI
$ npx skills add qf-studio/navigator --skill nav-release -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install qf-studio/navigator nav-release --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/qf-studio/navigator.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/nav-release .claude/skills/nav-release && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
nav-release
GitHub stars
355
Token cost
~2.5k tokens
SKILL.md length
655 words
Files
3
Skills in repo
32
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Validate and release Navigator plugin to marketplace. An agent skill from qf-studio/navigator.

  • Works in 7 steps: Pre-Release Validation [CRITICAL] → 5: Hook Smoke Test [STRONGLY RECOMMENDED… → Display Validation Results → …
  • Says release plugin
  • SKILL.md covers Why This Exists, When to Invoke, Execution Steps and Predefined Functions, plus 4 more sections
  • Runs Python scripts from its folder; calls python3, git and gh

What it does

Nav Release is an agent skill from qf-studio/navigator. Validate and release Navigator plugin to marketplace. Auto-invoke when user says "release plugin", "publish navigator", "create release", or "deploy new version".

Its SKILL.md is about 2.5k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 3 other files (for example `functions/release_validator.py` and `functions/test_release_validator.py`).

It sits in Agent Workflows, covering Hooks and plugins. The repository describes itself as: Finish What You Start — Context engineering for Claude Code. Sessions last 20+ exchanges instead of crashing at 7. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Says release plugin
  • Publish navigator
  • Deploy new version

Example prompts

  • “release plugin”
  • “publish navigator”
  • “create release”
  • “/nav-release”

Requirements

  • Python 3
  • Pre-approved tools (allowed-tools): Read, Bash, Grep, Glob, AskUserQuestion

Workflow steps

7 steps, taken from the step headings in SKILL.md.

  1. Pre-Release Validation [CRITICAL]
  2. 5: Hook Smoke Test [STRONGLY RECOMMENDED for any release touching hooks or plugin.json]
  3. Display Validation Results
  4. Confirm Version
  5. Execute Release
  6. Post-Release Verification
  7. Update Installed Plugin + Sync Docs Site

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 3bb9eac. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves these tools, so the agent can use them without asking each time:

    • Read
    • Bash
    • Grep
    • Glob
    • AskUserQuestion

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    Ships script files (Python), which the agent can run.

    Shell commands in SKILL.md call:

    • python3
    • git
    • gh
    • claude
    • bun

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    Links to these hosts (documentation or services it may open):

    • navigator.quantflow.studio

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Nav Release loads about 2.5k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 44 tokens; SKILL.md has 655 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~44
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~2.5k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check: notes

The automated check noted patterns worth knowing about, such as sudo or a known installer.

  • NotePre-approves every shell command (allowed-tools: Bash)SKILL.md
    allowed-tools: Read, Bash, Grep, Glob, AskUserQuestion

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from qf-studio/navigator at commit 3bb9eac, republished under its MIT licence (© qf-studio). 655 words, ~2,452 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/nav-release/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 2 other files; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
nav-release
description
Validate and release Navigator plugin to marketplace. Auto-invoke when user says "release plugin", "publish navigator", "create release", or "deploy new version".
allowed-tools
Read, Bash, Grep, Glob, AskUserQuestion
version
1.0.0

Navigator Release Skill

Validate plugin integrity and release to marketplace with all safety checks.

Why This Exists

After v5.1.0 incident where nav-profile was referenced in plugin.json but never committed, causing install failures. This skill ensures:

  • All referenced skills exist and are committed
  • Version consistency across all files
  • Tag created AFTER all commits
  • Post-release verification

When to Invoke

Auto-invoke when:

  • User says "release plugin", "publish navigator"
  • User says "create release", "deploy new version"
  • User says "release vX.Y.Z"

DO NOT invoke if:

  • Just committing changes (no release)
  • Updating documentation only
  • Testing locally

Execution Steps

Step 1: Pre-Release Validation [CRITICAL]

Run validation script:

bash
python3 functions/release_validator.py --check-all

This validates:

  1. All skills in plugin.json exist
  2. All skill files are committed (not untracked)
  3. Version consistency across files
  4. No uncommitted changes in skills/

If validation fails: STOP and fix issues before proceeding.

Run hook smoke-test:

bash
python3 functions/release_validator.py --verify-hooks

This executes every plugin manifest hook command via bash twice — once with $CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT bound to the repo under release, once with it unset and HOME pointed at a tmp dir whose .claude/plugins/marketplaces/navigator-marketplace links to the repo, so the manifest fallback path is what resolves (TASK-99). NAVIGATOR_MOD_OWNS and PILOT_EXECUTOR are scrubbed from both runs; inside a Claude Code session the mod's ownership list would otherwise make the Python dispatcher exit silently and fake the v6.14.0 signature. It detects the v6.14.0 silent-fail signature: a payload-emitting hook (SessionStart, PreCompact, PostCompact) that exits 0 with no stdout and no stderr.

Other hook events (Stop, UserPromptSubmit, PreToolUse, PostToolUse) are silent by design — they're state-writers or blocking-only — so quiet exit 0 there is correct behavior and is not flagged.

Expected output on a healthy release:

Hook smoke-test: 20/20 passed, 0 failed

  ✓  SessionStart       [set  ] exit=0 out=10353B err=0B
  ✓  SessionStart       [unset] exit=0 out=10353B err=0B
  ✓  PreCompact         [set  ] exit=0 out=2B err=87B
  ✓  PreCompact         [unset] exit=0 out=2B err=87B
  ...

Regression output (what v6.14.0 would have shown):

  ❌ SessionStart       [unset] silent exit 0 — payload-emitting hook produced no output
     python3 "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT:-...}/hooks/nav_session_start.py"

If --verify-hooks fails: STOP. The hook command in plugin.json is broken in the CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT-unset case. Fix the command (typically a fallback-path expansion issue) and re-run before proceeding.

Also run the two static runtime gates (both are CI steps in release.yml since TASK-99):

bash
python3 functions/release_validator.py --verify-dispatcher          # every manifest hook routes through nav_dispatch.py; every registry op has a committed, importable hooks/ops/<name>.py
python3 functions/release_validator.py --verify-conformance           # a harness-conformance results file exists for `claude --version` (CI passes the pinned version)

Background: this check was added in v6.15.2 after v6.14.0 shipped a shell guard (if [ -n "$CLAUDE_PLUGIN_DIR" ]; then ... fi) that silently no-opped every hook when the variable was unset. The bug masked itself for two releases because the navigator source repo had a project-local .claude/settings.json backstop. Other Nav-initialized projects (no backstop) got zero injection with zero error signal. See mem-036 and releases/RELEASE-NOTES-v6.15.1.md / v6.15.2.md.

Show full SKILL.md (262 more words)Show less
Step 2: Display Validation Results

Show validation summary:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
NAVIGATOR RELEASE VALIDATION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Skills Check:
  [x] nav-loop          ✓ exists, committed
  [x] nav-profile       ✓ exists, committed
  [x] nav-diagnose      ✓ exists, committed
  ...

Version Check:
  plugin.json:      5.1.0 ✓
  marketplace.json: 5.1.0 ✓
  CLAUDE.md:        5.1.0 ✓
  README.md:        5.1.0 ✓

Git Status:
  Uncommitted skills: 0 ✓
  Untracked skills:   0 ✓

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
VALIDATION: PASSED
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Step 3: Confirm Version

Ask user to confirm version:

Ready to release Navigator vX.Y.Z

This will:
1. Commit any pending changes
2. Push to origin/main
3. Create and push git tag vX.Y.Z
4. CI workflow (.github/workflows/release.yml) publishes the GitHub release from the tag

Proceed? [Y/n]
Step 4: Execute Release

If confirmed, run release sequence:

bash
# 1. Commit if needed
git add .
git commit -m "chore(release): prepare vX.Y.Z" || true

# 2. Push to origin
git push origin main

# 3. Create and push tag — this triggers .github/workflows/release.yml,
#    which creates the GitHub release from releases/RELEASE-NOTES-vX.Y.Z.md.
git tag -a vX.Y.Z -m "Navigator vX.Y.Z: [description]"
git push origin vX.Y.Z

Do NOT run gh release create locally. The workflow owns release publication. Local creation races the workflow and historically caused "release with the same tag name already exists" CI failures.

Step 5: Post-Release Verification

Wait for the Publish Release workflow and verify it succeeded:

bash
# Watch the most recent run; exits non-zero if it fails.
gh run watch --exit-status "$(gh run list --workflow=release.yml --limit=1 --json databaseId --jq '.[0].databaseId')"

# Confirm the release is published
gh release view vX.Y.Z --json tagName,name,isDraft,assets

If the workflow fails, inspect with gh run view --log-failed and fix before retrying — do NOT fall back to gh release create locally.

Verify tag contains all skills:

bash
python3 functions/release_validator.py --verify-tag vX.Y.Z

Clear local cache (for testing):

bash
rm -rf ~/.claude/plugins/cache/navigator-marketplace/

Instruct user to test:

Release complete! To verify:

1. Run: /plugin install navigator
2. Check plugin list shows vX.Y.Z
3. Verify no errors in plugin details

If errors occur, see: .agent/sops/deployment/plugin-release.md

Step 6: Update Installed Plugin + Sync Docs Site
bash
claude plugin update navigator && claude plugin list | grep -A1 navigator@   # then restart

The docs site is a separate repo (qf-studio/navigator-docs, local ~/Projects/startups/navigator-site, live at https://navigator.quantflow.studio on AWS); it does not update itself. Bump lib/version.ts, add/adjust content/skills/*.mdx and content/reference/nav-config-schema.mdx for anything new, bun run build, commit and push main, then push a prod-<VERSION>-$(date +%s) tag: "Build image" publishes the image to GHCR and "Deploy QuantFlow AWS" rolls it to ECS and invalidates CloudFront. Confirm the live version string at navigator.quantflow.studio. Full procedure: .agent/sops/development/release-workflow.md Step 7.

Predefined Functions

functions/release_validator.py

Validates plugin integrity before release:

bash
# Check all skills exist and are committed
python3 functions/release_validator.py --check-all

# Verify specific version
python3 functions/release_validator.py --check-version 5.1.0

# Verify tag contents
python3 functions/release_validator.py --verify-tag v6.15.2

# Smoke-test plugin manifest hook commands (v6.15.2+)
python3 functions/release_validator.py --verify-hooks

# Python fallback runtime: dispatcher routing + registry ops exist, committed, import (TASK-99)
python3 functions/release_validator.py --verify-dispatcher

# Harness-conformance results exist for a Claude Code version (default: `claude --version`)
python3 functions/release_validator.py --verify-conformance 2.1.287

Error Handling

Missing skill detected:

❌ VALIDATION FAILED

Missing skills:
  - skills/nav-profile/ (referenced in plugin.json but not found)

Fix: Create the skill or remove from plugin.json

Uncommitted skills detected:

❌ VALIDATION FAILED

Uncommitted skills:
  - skills/nav-loop/ (modified)
  - skills/nav-profile/ (untracked)

Fix: git add skills/ && git commit -m "Add missing skills"

Version mismatch detected:

❌ VALIDATION FAILED

Version mismatch:
  plugin.json:      5.1.0
  marketplace.json: 5.0.0  ← MISMATCH
  CLAUDE.md:        5.1.0

Fix: Update marketplace.json to 5.1.0

Success Criteria

Release is successful when:

  • All skills validated (exist + committed)
  • Version consistent across all files
  • Hook smoke-test passes (--verify-hooks reports zero failures)
  • Git tag created after all commits
  • Publish Release workflow run completes successfully
  • GitHub release published with notes asset attached
  • Test installation succeeds (no errors)

Quick Reference

bash
# Full release with validation
"Release Navigator v5.2.0"

# Just validate (no release)
"Validate plugin for release"

# Fix after failed release
"Fix release tag v5.1.0"

  • SOP: .agent/sops/deployment/plugin-release.md
  • Config: .claude-plugin/plugin.json
  • Marketplace: .claude-plugin/marketplace.json

© qf-studio, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 2 other files in skills/nav-release of qf-studio/navigator.

  • SKILL.md
  • functions/release_validator.py
  • functions/test_release_validator.py

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 3bb9eac

Compare with similar skills

Nav Release next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Nav Release compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Nav Release this skillqf-studio/navigator355—~2.5kAutomated safety check: NotesMIT
Test Slack Appslackapi/slack-skills-plugin147—~2.4kAutomated safety check: NotesMIT
Hook Development for Claude Code Pluginsanthropics/claude-plugins-official38k10 repos~4.1kAutomated safety check: NotesApache-2.0
Claude Code Agent Developmentanthropics/claude-plugins-official38k7 repos~2.8kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0
Claude Code Skill Developer Guidediet103/claude-code-infrastructure-showcase10k11 repos~3.5kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Plugin Settings Patternanthropics/claude-plugins-official38k7 repos~3kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0

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Questions about Nav Release

What does Nav Release do?

Validate and release Navigator plugin to marketplace. An agent skill from qf-studio/navigator. Nav Release is an agent skill from qf-studio/navigator. Validate and release Navigator plugin to marketplace.

When should I use Nav Release?

Nav Release fits situations like: says release plugin; publish navigator; deploy new version.

How do I install Nav Release in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add qf-studio/navigator --skill nav-release -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/nav-release in qf-studio/navigator) into .claude/skills/nav-release in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Nav Release in Codex?

Run `npx skills add qf-studio/navigator --skill nav-release -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/nav-release in qf-studio/navigator) into .agents/skills/nav-release in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Nav Release in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add qf-studio/navigator --skill nav-release -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/nav-release, .gemini/skills/nav-release, .github/skills/nav-release and .opencode/skills/nav-release in your project.

What does Nav Release need to run?

Going by SKILL.md and its folder, Nav Release needs Python for the scripts in its folder and the command-line tools its instructions call (python3, git, gh, claude and bun). Our summary lists: Python 3. Its frontmatter pre-approves these tools: Read, Bash, Grep, Glob, AskUserQuestion.

Does Nav Release access the network?

SKILL.md names 1 domain. As links in the text: navigator.quantflow.studio. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Nav Release safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found notes only (pre-approves every shell command (allowed-tools: bash)), nothing it rates as a warning. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Nav Release use?

Nav Release is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Nav Release use?

About 2.5k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 9.8k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Nav Release?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Nav Release: Test Slack App (slackapi/slack-skills-plugin, 147 stars), Hook Development for Claude Code Plugins (anthropics/claude-plugins-official, 38k stars), Claude Code Agent Development (anthropics/claude-plugins-official, 38k stars) and Claude Code Skill Developer Guide (diet103/claude-code-infrastructure-showcase, 10k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Nav Release?

qf-studio (a GitHub organization) maintains it in qf-studio/navigator, which has 355 GitHub stars. The repository holds 32 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on October 8, 2026.

Source: qf-studio/navigator on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.