deploy: arming for the first time has nothing to rehearse against

A commander read the general doctrine — run the action once before arming — and
proposed replaying the last release against it. Fair reading of what was written,
and wrong here: every tag already has a success record, so the claim refuses, and
the only way to manufacture a trigger is to tag a release, which it must never do.

So the deploy procedure now says it outright: arm, and state that the action has
never executed under you. The next real release is the first run.

This belongs in deploy documentation rather than commander doctrine. The general
rule is sound; what is specific to this job is that its triggers are all spent, and
the agent should not have to be told that by the owner after the fact.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
2026-08-23 04:23:43 +00:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent fe000541b7
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## Arming for the first time — there is nothing to rehearse against
General commander doctrine says to run the action once before arming, so it is known to work unattended.
**That does not apply here, and reading it as "replay the last release" is wrong.**
Every `deploy/*` tag on the remote already has a success record in `data/deploys/`. The claim script will
refuse every one of them, and refusing is correct — a claim exists so a release is attempted once, ever.
So there is no legitimate trigger to rehearse with, and the only way to manufacture one is to tag a
release, which you must never do.
So: **arm, and say plainly that the action has never executed under you.** The next real release is the
first run. That is an honest statement of what is unproven, and it is better than a rehearsal that either
fights the claim or invents an occasion.
Two things follow from it, and they are the reason this is fine rather than a gap:
- The procedure below is already proven — nine releases, nine reports, and the last four ran unattended.
What is unproven is this loop, not the rollout.
- Your first real release therefore deserves more narration than later ones, not less. Say what you are
about to do before the agent starts, so the owner can stop it while stopping it is still cheap.
## What wakes you
You are not a loop. Something fires you, and each time you fire you do exactly one thing: check whether