Maintaining Mailglass

This document covers the release flow and maintenance protocols for Mailglass.

Release Flow

Mailglass uses Release Please to automate versioning and changelogs.

Before release work starts, run:

mix mailglass.repo.hygiene --check

The release branch must start from a clean worktree with no local ahead/behind drift from origin/main. If local work exists, preserve it on a named preserve/* branch before release work continues.

1. Merge feature branches into main using Conventional Commits.
2. Release Please will open a "Release PR" with the version bump and updated CHANGELOG.md.
3. Merging the Release PR creates the GitHub Release with RELEASE_PLEASE_TOKEN so release: published fan-out can trigger publish and smoke workflows. If downstream workflow fan-out does not happen, workflow_dispatch with the core release tag (mailglass-v<version>) is the canonical maintainer fallback.
4. Publishing is hands-free after CI is green: release-please auto-merges the release PR, gate-ci-green is the publish gate, and the hex-publish environment has no required reviewers.

Trust runner checkpoint handoff

Use mix verify.reference_host.journey as the canonical trust-runner command. By default it writes the checkpoint artifact to tmp/mailglass_trust_runner/checkpoint.json.

This trust-runner flow and reference-host evidence are usage-proof artifacts, not API-contract truth. Stable guarantee semantics are defined by the canonical stability inventories in docs/api_stability.md and mailglass_inbound/docs/api_stability.md, with executable contract truth enforced through mix verify.stability_contract.

Checkpoint consumers should require these keys exactly:

• schema_version
• claim_boundary
• checkpoint_count
• checkpoint_sha256
• checkpoints

Validate artifacts with bash scripts/check_trust_runner_checkpoint.sh --checkpoint tmp/mailglass_trust_runner/checkpoint.json.

Phase 58 extends this contract with signed-negative webhook and non-happy-path diagnosis semantics; it does not redefine or rename the Phase 57 stage keys.

Snapshot Update Protocol

When the installer output or golden files change:

1. Run mix verify.installer.golden.
2. If the failure is expected, update the golden files in test/fixtures/.
3. Commit the updated fixtures with a chore: update installer golden files message.

Publish Summary Snapshot Protocol

The files under .planning/publish/*-publish-summary.json are tracked release proof snapshots, not scratch output.

• Refresh them with mix mailglass.publish.check for the affected package(s).
• Review the diff together with the paired *-files.expected allowlist diff.
• Commit the snapshot update when the underlying package contents or version truth changed intentionally.

Do not gitignore these files: test/mailglass/stability_contract_test.exs reads the inbound summary directly as part of the sibling-package release contract.

Tarball Allowlist Protocol

Adding a file under a published package's lib/ changes what ships to Hex, and mix mailglass.publish.check blocks the release until the new file is recorded:

Delivery blocked: package files diff. Files added since last allowlist
update: ["lib/mailglass/<new_file>.ex"]

This fires in publish-hex's prepublish-summary job — before gate-ci-green — so the publish fan-out stops with every publish job skipped. Nothing reaches Hex. That is the gate working: a new file entered a published tarball and it refused to ship it unreviewed.

Update the allowlist in the same PR that adds the file:

1. Run mix mailglass.publish.check --package <pkg> --keep.
2. Copy _publish_check/<pkg>-files.actual over .planning/publish/<pkg>-files.expected. Do not hand-edit — the ordering is generated.
3. Re-run without --keep and confirm conflict=0.

If the file should not ship, exclude it in mix.exs under :package :files instead. Dev-only Mix tasks belong in dev/, which is on elixirc_paths for :dev/:test only and never enters the tarball.

Note that .planning/ is in release-please's exclude-paths, so an allowlist-only commit is not release-triggering. If a tag has already been cut without the allowlist update, the fix cannot reach that tag by merging to main — the publish workflow checks out the tag ref, not main. Either retag or cut a new patch version.

JTBD Docs Refresh Protocol

The JTBD docs are a two-file system:

• guides/jobs.md is the public adopter ramp-up guide
• .planning/research/JTBD-COVERAGE.md is the internal source of truth

Always refresh the internal map first, then project the stable Built rows into the public guide.

Refresh order

1. Read the current:
   • guides/jobs.md
   • .planning/research/JTBD-COVERAGE.md
   • README.md
   • CHANGELOG.md
   • .planning/PROJECT.md
   • .planning/ROADMAP.md
   • .planning/REQUIREMENTS.md
   • .planning/STATE.md
2. Reconcile shipped behavior against live code. When planning artifacts disagree, prefer live code, then PROJECT.md, then ROADMAP.md, then phase summaries/verification, and treat STATE.md as last-resort bookkeeping.
3. Run a primary-source ecosystem sanity check before changing priority claims. Current comparison set:
   • Rails Action Mailer
   • Rails Action Mailbox
   • Anymail
   • Laravel Mail
   • Resend inbound docs
4. Update .planning/research/JTBD-COVERAGE.md:
   • refresh built/planned/deferred statuses
   • refresh the active gap list
   • refresh the priority ordering
   • refresh the diminishing-returns line
   • append a row to the refresh log
5. Update guides/jobs.md from that map:
   • stable shipped jobs only
   • keep the narrative, adopter-facing framing
   • keep inbound summarized separately, noting its own independent 1.0 contract and routing readers to mailglass_inbound/docs/api_stability.md
6. Refresh dates in both files with exact calendar dates.
7. Update README or docs navigation only if the JTBD docs became harder to discover.
8. Run the docs contract tests before merging.

Guardrails

• Do not let guides/jobs.md become a roadmap doc.
• Do not let JTBD-COVERAGE.md become feature-inventory churn; it is about adopter jobs, gaps, and priority.
• If external research reveals only convenience asks, do not promote them above trust-proof or inbound-maturity work.

Required Checks

The honest repo-root entrypoint is mix verify.stability_contract or scripts/verify_support_contract.sh. They run the three required branch-protection buckets plus the inbound sibling-package docs lane in sequence:

• Support Contract Core
• Support Contract Admin
• mailglass_inbound docs contract (mailglass_inbound/test/mailglass_inbound/docs_contract_test.exs)
• Compile No Optional Deps

Branch protection requires exactly two contexts: CI Green and Guard Release Trigger (scripts/setup_branch_protection.sh, asserted by GATE-01 in test/scripts/required_checks_test.exs). The five merge-gating lanes below (compile_no_optional_deps, installer_host_smoke, support_contract_core, support_contract_admin, trust_lane_repo_head) are the members of ci_green.needs — they gate a merge through the CI Green aggregator, they are not required contexts in their own right. Confusing a ci_green.needs member with a required context is the job-id-vs-display-name mismatch that opened this milestone.

Release trust claims also require green trust evidence beyond the required branch-protection contexts: the clean-baseline and published-version trust journeys must complete, and the trust-runner-repo-head, trust-runner-clean-baseline, and trust-runner-published checkpoint artifacts must be present and valid.

Owner-applied branch protection:

• GH_TOKEN=<admin-pat> ./scripts/setup_branch_protection.sh main

Read-only branch-protection verification:

• ./scripts/verify-branch-protection.sh --print-expected
• ./scripts/verify-branch-protection.sh --print-expected-json
• GH_TOKEN=<admin-pat> ./scripts/verify-branch-protection.sh main

When those checks pass, they prove the current compatibility contract described in guides/compatibility-and-deprecations.md: runtime floors, matched sibling-package docs wiring for mailglass_inbound, matched mailglass_admin release truth, and the classification/disposition table below. Do not claim broader support than those repo artifacts prove.

This table is the single classification statement for the section. It answers two questions a table cell cannot hold on its own:

1. Two axes. This table is the classification axis — "what does this lane block?" Mailglass.CILanes.advisory_lanes/0 answers a different question — "does mix ci reproduce this lane locally?" A lane is routinely in both (Dialyzer is locally reproduced and publish-gating).
2. Never promote a matrix lane into the exact-equality required set. GitHub appends matrix values to a matrix job's explicit name: at runtime, so gate-ci-green would report a promoted matrix lane (missing) and block every publish. dialyzer, operator_browser_gate and preview_capture_advisory are the three matrix lanes today.

classification is one of required, advisory, publish-gating, structural. disposition is one of promote, keep-with-reason, retire. promote records a recommendation only — it does not mean the lane has been executed into that state; see each promote row's reason cell.

This table is verified against Mailglass.CILanes (test/support/ci_lanes.ex) by test/scripts/lane_classification_drift_test.exs — editing one without the other fails CI.

Required inbound release proof is deterministic repo/package/workflow evidence: source and manifest parity, mix mailglass.publish.check --package mailglass_inbound, publish-summary output, release workflow tag/package selection, and post-publish Hex/HexDocs/smoke evidence when that publish phase runs. Provider-live checks and ecosystem canaries remain advisory unless a specific release claim explicitly depends on them.

The 24-row table above covers ci.yml only. The separate advisory-matrix.yml workflow carries additional lanes — Core Full Suite Advisory, Provider Compatibility Advisory, and Inbound Full Suite Advisory — which run on push to main, pull requests to main, a nightly cron, and workflow_dispatch. None of them is a member of ci_green.needs, so none gates a merge. All are matrix lanes whose display names carry runtime matrix suffixes, so the never-promote rule above applies to them too.

Provider Live Advisory remains a cron and workflow_dispatch canary. It is not a merge blocker.

Bus Factor & Continuity

Mailglass is single-maintainer at v0.1. The release pipeline is intentionally hands-free after the repo-proved gates pass: gate-ci-green checks the release SHA and the hex-publish environment has no required reviewers. This is documented honestly here rather than presented as a stronger human approval control than it is. Multi-owner Hex transition is deferred to v0.5, when production adopters exist (D-26 rationale: at v0.1 the asymmetry of a co-owner being able to mix hex.publish from their own machine bypassing GitHub governance is a worse footgun than the bus-factor risk it solves).

If szTheory is unreachable for more than 30 days, the community can request a Hex.pm package transfer by opening a public issue titled Maintainer-unreachable: requesting Hex transfer on https://github.com/szTheory/mailglass/issues — Hex.pm's public maintainer-transfer process can be initiated from there.

Retract Decision Tree

Five rules. Bias toward patch over retract — three retractions in your first six months tells evaluators "don't bet on this lib."

1. Data-loss / security / signature bypass / fails to compile. Run mix hex.retire <pkg> <ver> security|invalid --message "<140 chars>" AND ship <ver+1> immediately.
2. User-visible breakage with workaround. Do NOT retire. Patch within 7 days. Add a CHANGELOG entry. If the fix changes a documented compatibility bridge or support claim, update guides/compatibility-and-deprecations.md in the same patch.
3. Cosmetic / docs / non-runtime. Do NOT retire. Roll into next planned patch.
4. Published less than 60 minutes ago AND zero downloads. Run mix hex.publish --revert <ver> (only window where unpublish works — also bounded by Hex.pm's 24-hour initial-release window).
5. Already retired and false alarm. Run mix hex.retire <pkg> <ver> --unretire.

~> Sibling Pin: Rollback Lever for a Bad Core Patch

As of v1.15 Phase 125, mailglass_inbound and mailglass_admin use pessimistic ~> constraints on mailglass core instead of exact == pins. This changed the resolver's degrees of freedom: a core patch release now auto-resolves into ~> sibling adopters' dependency graphs (previously the == wall blocked it structurally).

If a bad core patch slips through and reaches adopters via the ~> constraint:

mix hex.retire mailglass X.Y.Z security|invalid --message "<140 chars describing the issue>"

This tells the Hex resolver to stop selecting that version. Follow immediately with a fixed X.Y.(Z+1) core release so the ~> constraint resolves to the safe version instead. The sibling packages themselves need no change — their ~> constraint automatically picks up the new patch.

Contrast with the old == behavior: with exact pins, a bad core patch could never silently reach inbound adopters because the inbound == X.Y.Z constraint would hold them on the prior version until a deliberate paired inbound release. mix hex.retire is the explicit replacement for that structural guarantee.

Dependency Advisory Triage

Not every advisory arrives as a dependabot pull request. Dependabot can only ever propose a fix for a direct dependency it controls the version constraint for — it cannot auto-file a fix for a Hex transitive dependency whose advisory can only be closed by bumping a parent package's version constraint. That is documented upstream Dependabot behavior, not a repo defect. The hpax advisory this milestone opened on is the literal case: no PR was ever possible for it, and the finding sat unactioned until someone read mix hex.audit and mix deps.audit output directly. Reading raw audit output by hand is therefore the only path for that class of advisory, not a fallback for when the PR queue is running behind.

Who: szTheory, the sole maintainer (see "Bus Factor & Continuity" above).

What: run mix mailglass.audit --kind hex (which wraps mix hex.audit) and mix mailglass.audit --kind deps (which wraps mix deps.audit) locally, or read the Hex Audit / Deps Audit CI job logs on main (both cover all three Mix projects — root, mailglass_admin, mailglass_inbound). This is a different activity from clearing the open dependabot PR queue: the PR queue only ever proposes a fix for a direct dependency, so a clean queue proves nothing about a transitive finding with no PR attached to it.

How often: weekly, aligned with .github/dependabot.yml's existing weekly schedule, plus immediately whenever Hex Audit or Deps Audit goes red on main — both lanes are merge-gating as of Phase 142/VULN-03, so a red state is visible the moment it happens instead of waiting for the next scheduled pass.

Response expectation, by severity — bounded to what one unpaid maintainer can sustainably keep, matching the Security Response SLA numbers below: written to be kept, not aspired to.

• HIGH / CRITICAL: within 14 days — a patch, or a dated allowlist exception recorded with a reason and a recheck_by date. Mirrors the "Mitigation or workaround for critical issues" number below.
• MEDIUM: within 30 days.
• LOW: at the next scheduled weekly triage — no forced timeline.

A missed cycle does not lose signal: the next mix hex.audit/mix deps.audit run re-surfaces every outstanding advisory from scratch, so nothing is silently dropped, only delayed. Mailglass is single-maintainer (see "Bus Factor & Continuity" above), so concurrent-maintainer triage races are out of scope for this cadence — that is an already-documented posture, not a new gap this section invents.

Security Response SLA

Single-maintainer numbers, written to be kept rather than aspired to.

• Acknowledgement of report: within 72 hours.
• Mitigation or workaround for critical issues: within 14 days.
• Public security advisory: published alongside the fix.

Critical issue classes are listed in SECURITY.md (## Critical Classes). Reports go through the disclosure address documented there or via GitHub Private Vulnerability Reporting if no email is reachable.

Release Runbook

Five steps. Step 4 has a literal 60-minute timer — that is the last revert window before the published artifact becomes permanent.

Use the Phase 38 release-day proof forms while running these steps:

• .planning/milestones/v1.0-phases/38-release-rehearsal-and-proof-artifacts/38-03-RELEASE-CHECKLIST.md
• .planning/milestones/v1.0-phases/38-release-rehearsal-and-proof-artifacts/38-03-RELEASE-RECORD.md

For the inbound-only mailglass_inbound 1.0.0 slice, use the inbound-specific companion forms:

• .planning/phases/73-inbound-1-0-publish-evidence/73-01-RELEASE-RECORD.md
• .planning/phases/73-inbound-1-0-publish-evidence/73-01-RELEASE-CHECKLIST.md

The archived Phase 38 forms remain the linked core/admin v1.0 record; the Phase 73 forms cover the inbound-only slice.

The checklist separates repo-proved gates from manual/external proof and forces explicit capture of the tag, workflow run URLs, approver identity, fallback usage, Hex/HexDocs checks, branch-protection result, and 60-minute outcome.

1. Verify CI green on main for the SHA to be released. Check actions/workflows/ci.yml — required because publish-hex.yml gates on this SHA via the gate-ci-green job (per Plan 08, D-16). The required release-truth buckets are:

   • Support Contract Core (Elixir 1.18 / OTP 27)
   • Support Contract Admin (Elixir 1.18 / OTP 27)
   • Compile No Optional Deps (Elixir 1.18 / OTP 27)
   • Trust Lane Repo Head (Elixir 1.18 / OTP 27)
   • Installer Host Smoke (shift-left consumer-install smoke; promoted from advisory)
   • Phase 38 prepublish proof/export bundle (38-01-PREPUBLISH-PROOF.md)
   • Phase 38 install/upgrade rehearsal artifact (38-02-REHEARSAL-EVIDENCE.md)
   • Trust-runner checkpoint artifacts: trust-runner-repo-head, trust-runner-clean-baseline, and trust-runner-published

   The post-publish trust journey is the EVID-03 sentinel. It must be green before milestone trust claims or v1.3 closeout language is accepted.

2. Merge the release-please PR. Squash-merge keeps the changelog history linear. Review the release PR diff before merge. This repo uses a custom mailglass_admin dep-pin sync step, so the generated PR is load-bearing. The current release path emits package tags such as mailglass-v<version> and mailglass_admin-v<version>. If a broad milestone PR was squash-merged under a non-releasable subject and release-please skips the cut, recover with a tiny follow-up commit that carries a Release-As: <intended-version> footer. Do not hand-edit .release-please-manifest.json to force the version.

3. Monitor the hands-free publish fan-out. Review the pre-publish summary in the workflow run page (rendered by the prepublish-summary job per D-15) after gate-ci-green passes and the publish jobs fan out. Verify the file count, total size, CHANGELOG excerpt, and top files all match expectations. Record the tag, publish workflow run URL, gate-ci-green result, and publish fan-out status in 38-03-RELEASE-RECORD.md.

   • Package order: The workflow guarantees mailglass (core) publishes first, then mailglass_inbound, then mailglass_admin. Admin waits on inbound to avoid sibling-package Hex indexing races.
   • Idempotency: All three publish steps check mix hex.info first and skip the publish command if the version is already live, making the workflow safe to retry.
   • Fallback path: If the Release Please tag/release exists but publish-hex did not fan out, dispatch .github/workflows/publish-hex.yml manually (with package=all and dry_run=false). Do not dispatch from main. Always use the reviewed release tag for the package being recovered so the publish run is pinned to the exact commit Release Please tagged. For an inbound-only mailglass_inbound-v1.0.0 publish or recovery, dispatch package=mailglass_inbound pinned to the mailglass_inbound-v1.0.0 tag; the fan-out skips publish-core and does NOT trigger publish-admin, so no mailglass/mailglass_admin release is forced. The publish-inbound/publish-admin success/skipped gating is a security control — do not loosen it.

4. Within 60 minutes of publish: smoke-install in a fresh Phoenix app. Set a literal timer when approving the deployment. Run:

   mix archive.install hex phx_new --force
   mix phx.new sandbox --no-ecto --no-mailer --install
   cd sandbox

   # add {:mailglass, "~> 1.3"}, {:mailglass_admin, "~> 1.3"}, {:mailglass_inbound, "~> 1.0"} to deps

   mix deps.get && mix mailglass.install && mix compile --warnings-as-errors
   mix phx.server  # visit http://localhost:4000/dev/mail/

   If anything fails AND the publish was less than 60 minutes ago AND zero downloads have happened, the Retract Decision Tree rule 4 (mix hex.publish --revert) is reachable. After 60 minutes the only options are retire-then-patch (rule 1) or patch-only (rule 2).

Keep the published support story honest: if the smoke or support-contract checks reveal a mismatch with the documented matrix or upgrade posture, fix the guide and package metadata together rather than carrying split truth. For inbound-slice changes, rerun mix verify.stability_contract so the repo-root lane proves the canonical mailglass_inbound docs and support posture before you publish. If you need to reproduce the v0.2 codemod or rollback story during this window, do it in a disposable fixture or git-clean worktree only. The public rollback contract is git-based review/revert of the upgrade diff, not cleanup of arbitrary dirty repositories.

The post-publish-smoke workflow (.github/workflows/post-publish-smoke.yml, Plan 09) runs the same smoke automatically — but it does not respect the 60-minute window. Run the manual smoke during the window regardless. If publish succeeds but smoke does not fan out, use workflow_dispatch on .github/workflows/post-publish-smoke.yml with that same core tag. Record the post-publish smoke run URL, whether fallback dispatch was used, Hex/HexDocs URLs, and the final 60-minute decision in the Phase 38 release record.

5. Post the release link to Elixir Forum #libraries section (post-publish, optional — performed by maintainer on their own cadence; not gated by Phase 07.1's milestone-shipped marker per CONTEXT line 14 / line 351). Body equals the GitHub Release narrative (CHANGELOG entry verbatim plus one framing paragraph for 0.x.0 minor bumps; verbatim CHANGELOG only for patches).