Step 3 · Post-Release

Goal

Confirm production stability, clean up release artefacts, communicate the release, and capture any follow-up work.

Instructions

You are in workflow step 3 of the release-cycle. The release has been deployed. Now confirm it's stable and wrap up.

Tasks to Perform

1. Monitor for 30 Minutes

After every production deployment, actively monitor for at least 30 minutes before declaring success:

# Watch error rate
tail -f [production log] | grep "ERROR"

# Watch response times (if metrics are available)
# Check your monitoring dashboard

# Count errors per 5-minute window
watch -n 60 "grep -c 'ERROR' [production log]"

Healthy signals:

• Error rate matches pre-release baseline
• Response times match pre-release baseline
• No new error types appearing

Unhealthy signals (trigger rollback):

• Error rate increased by more than 2×
• New exception types not seen before the release
• User-facing endpoints returning 5xx

2. Clean Up TODO.md

Move all completed feature and bug-fix tasks from ## Todo to ## Done:

## Done
- [x] feat: [description] — released in v1.3.0
- [x] fix: [description] — released in v1.3.0

Archive old done items past a reasonable history:

# Optional: move old done items to docs/releases/v1.3.0-tasks.md

3. Communicate the Release

Notify stakeholders. Include:

• Version number: v1.3.0
• What's new (1-3 sentences per major feature)
• Any breaking changes or migration steps required
• Link to the full changelog

Format:

🚀 Released v1.3.0

New:
- [Feature name]: [one-sentence description]

Fixed:
- [Bug description]

Breaking changes: [none / or describe]

Full changelog: [link to CHANGELOG.md]

4. Capture Follow-Up Work

During the release process, you likely noticed:

• Minor issues not severe enough to block the release
• Technical debt to address in the next cycle
• Documentation that could be improved
• Monitoring gaps exposed by the deploy

Add these to TODO.md, always including the source reference. Status rules: [ ] = not started · [~] = in progress (one at a time) · [x] = done (prefix the date).

- [ ] chore: [follow-up item] — noticed during v1.3.0 release _(ref: workflows/release-cycle/03-post-release.md)_
- [ ] docs: [documentation gap] _(ref: workflows/release-cycle/03-post-release.md)_
- [ ] monitor: [observability improvement] _(ref: workflows/release-cycle/03-post-release.md)_

5. Update the Product Owner

Trigger the Product Owner agent to assess the current state and populate TODO.md with the next batch of work for the following development cycle.

Post-Release Health Report

After 30 minutes of monitoring, record:

Exit Criteria

This step is complete when:

• [ ] 30 minutes of stable monitoring recorded
• [ ] TODO.md cleaned up
• [ ] Stakeholders notified
• [ ] Follow-up tasks captured
• [ ] Release cycle closed