vership

A release orchestrator that handles version bumping, changelog generation, and publishing — with zero configuration.

$ vership bump patch
✓ Working tree is clean
✓ On branch main
✓ Tag v0.4.1 does not exist
✓ Lock file in sync
✓ Lint passes
✓ Tests pass
→ Bumping 0.4.0 → 0.4.1
→ Updated rust
→ Updating version files
→ Generated changelog (3 entries)
→ Running artifact: cargo run --release -- schema generate
→ Committed: chore: bump version to v0.4.1
→ Tagged: v0.4.1
→ Pushed to origin

Why vership?

Most release tools require config files, plugins, or CI integration before they do anything. vership works out of the box: it detects your project type, runs pre-flight checks, generates a changelog from conventional commits, bumps the version, and pushes — in one command.

Install

# Homebrew
brew install rvben/tap/vership

# From crates.io
cargo install vership

# From PyPI
pip install vership

# From source
git clone https://github.com/rvben/vership && cd vership && cargo install --path .

Quick Start

No setup required. Just use conventional commits and run:

vership bump patch    # 0.1.0 → 0.1.1
vership bump minor    # 0.1.1 → 0.2.0
vership bump major    # 0.2.0 → 1.0.0

Initial release? Tag the version already in your manifest:

vership release       # tag the current Cargo.toml/package.json version as-is

Interrupted run? Continue where it stopped:

vership resume        # finishes commit/tag/push using the on-disk version

Preview before releasing:

vership bump patch --dry-run

Commands

vership bump <patch|minor|major>   Bump version, generate changelog, tag, push
  --dry-run                        Preview without making changes
  --skip-checks                    Skip lint and test checks
  --no-push                        Stop after tagging, do not push
  --prepare                        Commit changes, but do not tag or push
vership release                    Tag the on-disk version as-is (no bump)
  --dry-run / --skip-checks / --no-push / --prepare    same as bump
vership resume                     Finish an interrupted bump (trusts on-disk version)
  --dry-run / --skip-checks / --no-push / --prepare    same as bump
vership changelog [patch|minor|major]  Preview the exact release section
vership preflight [patch|minor|major]  Check the intended release target
vership status                     Show version, project type, unreleased commits
vership verify [<version>]         Verify a release is live on all publish targets
  --targets <list> / --skip <list>         Filter targets
vership update-local [<version>]   Update this machine's installs to a version
  --managers <list> / --skip <list>        Filter package managers
  --dry-run                        Print the install commands without running them
vership config init                Create vership.toml with defaults
vership schema                     JSON schema for agent integration
vership completions <shell>        Generate shell completions

bump auto-detects an interrupted prior run when the on-disk version already matches the expected post-bump value AND the working tree is dirty. The explicit resume subcommand is the escape hatch for cases where auto-detection doesn't fire.

What It Does

vership bump patch runs this flow:

1. Detect project type (Rust, Rust+Maturin, Node, Go, Python, Gradle, Ansible Collection)
2. Check clean working tree (including untracked files), correct branch, intended tag doesn't exist locally or on origin, lockfile in sync
3. Check lint and tests pass (skippable with --skip-checks)
4. Bump version in project files (Cargo.toml, package.json, pyproject.toml, gradle.properties, galaxy.yml) or tag directly (Go)
5. Update version references in extra files (version_files)
6. Generate changelog from conventional commits since last tag
7. Regenerate artifacts from commands (artifacts)
8. Commit, tag, and atomically push the branch and tag

A repo carrying several manifests is resolved by precedence: galaxy.yml, Cargo.toml, package.json, go.mod, pyproject.toml, Gradle. A package.json marked "private": true is skipped in that order and considered only once nothing else matches, so a vendored test harness or docs site does not outrank the manifest the repo actually releases. Set [project] type in vership.toml to override detection entirely.

Your existing CI release workflow (GitHub Actions, etc.) triggers on the tag push as usual. vership handles the local side only.

Release commits carry a Vership-Release trailer. If a pre-push hook or the network fails after the local tag is created but before origin receives it, rerunning the same command safely removes that unpublished tag and retries the same version. Vership never rewrites a tag that already exists on origin.

Post-Release Verification

A pushed tag does not mean the release published: a CI job can fail after tagging, skip a registry, or upload an empty release. vership verify checks that a version is actually live everywhere the repo publishes:

$ vership verify
verify 0.5.6
  ok   tag        v0.5.6
  ok   release    0.5.6
  ok   crates     0.5.6
  FAIL pypi       not found

Targets are autodetected: tag and release from the GitHub remote, crates from Cargo.toml (unless publish = false), pypi from pyproject.toml, npm from a non-private package.json, homebrew and ghcr from publish steps in .github/workflows/. The [verify] section in vership.toml can skip targets or set the tap, formula, and image coordinates:

[verify]
skip = ["npm"]
tap = "owner/homebrew-tap"     # default: <owner>/homebrew-tap
formula = "name"               # default: repo name
image = "owner/name"           # default: owner/repo lowercased

Exit codes: 0 when every target passes; 8 (unpublished, retryable) when anything is missing, version-mismatched, or errored. Publishing may still be in flight, so 8 is a state, not a failure. To block until a release is fully live, compose with tarry:

tarry cmd --timeout 20m -- vership verify

Local Install Update

Releasing a tool you use yourself leaves your own machine on the old version, and often on several old versions at once: the same executable can be installed by cargo, uv, npm and Homebrew, and whichever directory comes first on $PATH is the one you actually run. vership update-local closes that gap:

$ vership update-local
update-local 0.5.13
  ok   cargo      0.5.12 -> 0.5.13
  ok   uv         0.5.13
  ok   vership    /Users/you/.cargo/bin/vership (cargo 0.5.13)
                  shadowed /usr/local/bin/vership (unmanaged)

Only managers that already hold the package are touched; nothing is newly installed. The package name each manager is asked about comes from the same detection verify uses: the crate name from Cargo.toml, the project name from pyproject.toml, the package name from package.json, the formula from the detected tap.

Before anything is installed, each manager's registry is checked for the target version. This matters because an unpinned reinstall is a silent downgrade: cargo install <crate> --force fetches whatever the registry currently serves and exits 0, so running it a minute after vership bump would reinstall the version you just replaced. A registry that has not caught up reports unpublished (exit 8, retryable) and runs nothing, for every manager and not only the lagging one: registries publish at different speeds on the same release, and a half-updated machine is not a state "retry and you are done" can describe. Exit 8 therefore means the machine is exactly as it was. --dry-run reports the same wait and the same exit 8, because a preview that claimed the installs would run would be predicting something a real run at that moment would not do; the commands are still printed. It composes with tarry to close a release in one line:

vership bump patch && tarry cmd --timeout 20m -- vership update-local

After the installs, every copy of every executable on $PATH is reported in $PATH order. Ownership is decided by resolved file identity, not by directory, so a hand-copied binary sitting next to a uv shim is reported as unmanaged rather than credited to uv, and its version is left blank rather than guessed. A copy resolving into a Homebrew keg is the one exception, credited to brew at the version the keg path states, since Homebrew owns everything under Cellar/ by construction. That covers the copies no manager was asked about: brew is probed only when the project's tap is detected. Exit 1 when an install fails, or when a stale or unmanaged copy shadows the one that was updated: an update nothing reaches is not an update.

Installs that would not reproduce the release are reported and left alone: a git or alternate-registry install, and a cargo install --path install of a different project. A --path install of the project you are in is rebuilt from it.

Caveat: the uv update is a pinned uv tool install <pkg>==<version> --reinstall --refresh, which is the only deterministic form (uv tool upgrade has no --refresh and reports nothing to do against a cached index). A pinned reinstall drops --with extras the tool was originally installed with; re-add them by hand if you use them.

Changelog Format

Generated from conventional commits in Keep a Changelog format:

## [0.2.1](https://github.com/you/repo/compare/v0.2.0...v0.2.1) - 2026-03-28

### Added

- **api**: add user endpoint ([abc1234](https://github.com/you/repo/commit/abc1234))

### Fixed

- correct null handling in parser ([def5678](https://github.com/you/repo/commit/def5678))

Curated Unreleased notes

Vership promotes hand-written notes under either ## [Unreleased] (the canonical Keep a Changelog form) or ## Unreleased. A fresh canonical ## [Unreleased] heading is left behind for the next release. Duplicate or malformed Unreleased headings stop the release rather than risking incomplete notes.

When the Unreleased section contains curated content, the release keeps those notes and merges in the generated entries they do not cover. A generated entry joins the end of the curated section of the same name (### Fixed under ### Fixed), sections the notes lack are appended in the generated order, and an entry is left out only when the notes cite its commit hash (fixed the parser (abc1234)), so a hand-written description can stand in for the generated line. Vership lists every merged and cited entry on stderr, and both vership changelog <level> and vership bump <level> --dry-run show the exact section that would be released.

Set changelog.curated = "replace" in vership.toml to make the curated notes the whole release instead; every generated entry is then dropped and listed. Version link-reference definitions at the bottom of the file ([1.2.0]: https://...) are removed during promotion, and every heading or reference that used one is rewritten to an inline link first.

Version Files

Projects often have version strings scattered across READMEs, docs, and companion packages. vership updates them all during the bump:

# Text mode: search/replace with placeholders
[[version_files]]
glob = "README.md"
search = "rev: v{prev}"       # {prev} = old version
replace = "rev: v{version}"   # {version} = new version

# Field mode: update JSON fields directly
[[version_files]]
glob = "npm/*/package.json"
field = "version"

# Wildcard: update all values in an object
[[version_files]]
glob = "package.json"
field = "optionalDependencies.*"

All matched files are staged and included in the release commit automatically.

Artifacts

Some projects need to regenerate files from the built binary during release (schemas, rule exports, API docs). vership runs these commands and commits the output:

# Capture stdout to a file
[[artifacts]]
command = "cargo run --release -- schema generate-json"
output = "schema.json"

# Or let the command write its own files
[[artifacts]]
command = "make generate-docs"
files = ["docs/api.json"]

Commands run from the project root via sh -c. Output files are staged automatically. If a declared file doesn't exist after the command runs, the release aborts with a clear error.

Configuration

vership works without any configuration. Only create vership.toml if you need to override defaults:

[project]
branch = "main"              # Branch to release from
type = "go"                  # Skip detection: rust, rust-maturin, node, go,
                             # python, gradle, ansible-collection

[hooks]
pre-bump = "make verify"     # Run before version bump
post-push = "echo done"      # Run after push (e.g. trigger Homebrew update)

[checks]
lint = true                  # Run lint checks (default: true)
tests = true                 # Run tests (default: true)
allow_untracked = false      # Require untracked files to be added or ignored
lint_command = "npm run lint" # Override default lint command
test_command = "npm test"     # Override default test command

[changelog]
unconventional = "exclude"   # "exclude", "include", or "strict"
curated = "merge"            # "merge" generated entries into curated Unreleased
                             # notes, or "replace" them with the notes

Agent Integration

vership is designed to work with AI coding assistants:

# Machine-readable project status
vership status --json

# Full command schema for tool discovery
vership schema

License

MIT

Releasing

Vership owns versioning, changelog generation, release commits, and tags. See the release runbook for the verified workflow and recovery policy.