fix: republish release metadata on every deploy

[kattapug]

Problem

Every release-metadata URL on openstudio.org.in currently returns the SPA HTML shell:

GET /releases/ai-runtime/stable/latest.json  -> 200  text/html  31735 bytes
GET /appcast/windows-stable.xml              -> 200  text/html  31735 bytes
GET /nonexistent-probe-xyz.json              -> 200  text/html  31735 bytes   <- identical

(Server: Netlify, Cache-Status: "Netlify Edge"; hit. The _headers no-store rule for those paths is applied, so the deploy simply has no file there and /* -> /index.html 200 answers instead.)

Shipped desktop builds break on this. OpenStudio's AI Tools Setup fetches https://openstudio.org.in/releases/ai-runtime/stable/latest.json, receives HTML, juce::JSON::parse fails, and the user gets:

AI runtime download info is unavailable — Error reported: The AI runtime manifest was not valid JSON. — Terminal reason: runtime_manifest_invalid

The AI runtime is fully published (v0.0.40 carries OpenStudio-ai-runtime-stable-latest.json, runtime 0.0.11); only the website copy is gone.

Root cause

stageReleasePublishInputs() stages /releases and /appcast only from release-input/, and calls ensureCleanGeneratedReleaseTargets() when it finds nothing. release-input/ is gitignored and is populated only by .github/workflows/publish-release-surfaces.yml (repository_dispatch: openstudio_release_published).

So the metadata exists only in deploys produced by that workflow. Any ordinary Netlify build from a git push produces a dist with those files deliberately removed, silently overwriting them in production.

Timeline matches: last publish run 2026-05-19 (v0.0.40) → last website commit 2026-06-11 → metadata gone.

Change

Make an ordinary deploy self-sufficient. When release-input/ has no metadata, hydrate it from the desktop repo's release assets, then stage and validate exactly as before:

• hydrateReleaseMetadataInputs() — downloads the 6 required assets (+ optional Linux appcast) into release-input/.
• Tries https://github.com/<repo>/releases/latest/download/<asset> first; on failure falls back to scanning /releases for the newest non-draft, non-prerelease release carrying all required assets. GitHub's "latest" can be an ai-runtime-v* release, which does not publish them.
• Failure only console.warns — offline/local builds behave exactly as today.
• The publish workflow is unaffected: its release-input/ is already populated, so hydration never runs there.
• Opt out with OPENSTUDIO_FETCH_RELEASE_METADATA=0; repo override reuses the existing OPENSTUDIO_DESKTOP_REPO.
• .gitignore: added public/releases/stable/*, generated by staging but not covered by the existing patterns.

Verification

• npm run stage-release-publish-inputs on a clean checkout (no release-input/) hydrates all seven files from v0.0.40; npm run validate-release-publish-inputs passes; staged latest.json reports appVersion 0.0.40, runtimeVersion 0.0.11, new platforms.windows.base shape intact.
• New test/release-metadata-hydration.test.mjs (3 tests, injected fetch): happy path, fallback-to-release-scan, and no-release-found returning a reason instead of throwing. npm run test:release-metadata — 3/3 pass; test:ai-runtime still 6/6.
• npx eslint clean on changed files.

Note

This fixes future deploys. To restore production now, re-run the publish workflow for the current release:

gh api repos/sdevil7th/OpenStudioWebsite/dispatches \
  -f event_type=openstudio_release_published \
  -F 'client_payload[tag]=v0.0.40' \
  -F 'client_payload[channel]=stable' \
  -F 'client_payload[desktopRepo]=sdevil7th/OpenStudio'

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[netlify]

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