Action — prerelease

Computes the next pre-release of a branch, v<next>-<type>.<n>, from its Conventional Commits since the last final release tag, and can publish it as a GitHub pre-release on the commit, never marked latest. Talks to the REST API with curl and jq: no GitHub CLI needed. prerelease.yml wraps it and documents how the version is computed.

Usage

permissions:
  contents: write # publish only; computing needs contents: read

steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v7
    with:
      fetch-depth: 0
      fetch-tags: true
      persist-credentials: false
  - id: prerelease
    uses: KevinDeBenedetti/github-workflows/.github/actions/prerelease@main
    with:
      mode: publish

Inputs

Input	Default	Description
mode	plan	plan computes only; publish also creates the tag and the pre-release
sha	${{ github.sha }}	Commit to pre-release
prerelease-type	rc	Pre-release identifier
config-file	''	release-please config holding the bump rules; empty looks for one
tag	''	publish: the tag an earlier plan computed, checked against this run's
github-token	${{ github.token }}	Token with contents: write, used only to publish

Outputs

releasable, tag, version and base-tag, as described in prerelease.yml.

Notes

• The checkout needs the whole history and its tags: the action looks for the last final tag and counts the commits since.
• The token goes to curl through a header file, never on a command line.
• The release notes are written to $RUNNER_TEMP/prerelease-notes.md and to the job summary.