The v0.0.16 cut pushed the tag and then reported a failure because the release.yml run lost one gate to a timing-flaky test while its guard had passed and its publish job never ran. Rerunning the run by hand published the release; the tool had exited 1 and could not be run again, since a tag on origin meant "derive the next version".
The release stage now classifies a failed run from forge state: retryable when the conclusion is failure, the run is on its first attempt, every commit-status context in a failure state is a gate, and no release is published for the tag. A retryable run is rerun once through the actions API and the same run id is watched again, restarted only once the forge reports a higher run_attempt, so a concluded previous attempt is never read as the result. The rerun decision parses statuses strictly and treats anything it cannot read as terminal. A tag already on origin that peels to HEAD with no published release resumes at the release stage after the origin tag is verified (annotated, tool convention, pinned signing fingerprint). Both decisions are pure, table-tested functions. Spec bullets in specs/release-cut.md.
mokhtar
3e57f43e08