v1.54.0.0 feat: carve /ship into skeleton + on-demand sections (-59% always-loaded)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

CHANGELOG.md

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 # Changelog
 
+## [1.54.0.0] - 2026-05-30
+
+## **The heaviest skill stopped taxing every session. /ship's always-loaded cost dropped 59%, and its prose now loads only when a step needs it.**
+
+`/ship` was a 167KB wall that every session paid for in full, whether you were bumping a version or writing a changelog or none of it. It is now a 69KB decision-tree skeleton plus eight `sections/*.md` files the agent opens on demand. The eight steps that are long prose (the test run, coverage audit, plan-completion, the review army, Greptile triage, the adversarial pass, the changelog, the PR body) moved into sections behind STOP-Read pointers, so a run only reads the chapters its situation calls for. The version-bump logic that used to be ~90 lines of inline bash, the single worst re-bump footgun in the workflow, is now the tested `gstack-version-bump` CLI (classify / write / repair). Other hosts (codex, factory, kiro, opencode) keep the full inline skill unchanged, so nothing regresses off Claude. This release dogfooded itself: the version you are reading was bumped by `gstack-version-bump`.
+
+### The numbers that matter
+
+Measured directly from the generated skill (`wc -c ship/SKILL.md`) and the new section files, regenerated for all hosts:
+
+| Metric | Before (v1.53) | After (v1.54) | Δ |
+|--------|----------------|---------------|---|
+| ship always-loaded | 167 KB (~41.8K tokens) | 69 KB (~17.2K tokens) | -59% |
+| ship prose loaded per run | all of it | only applicable sections | on-demand |
+| ship version logic | ~90 lines inline bash | tested CLI, 15 unit tests | extracted |
+| External-host ship | 167 KB inline | 162 KB inline (unchanged behavior) | no regression |
+
+The skeleton is what loads the instant `/ship` is invoked, so the ~24.6K-token drop is paid back on every single ship, not just once.
+
+### What this means for you
+
+A `/ship` run starts ~3x lighter and pulls in each heavy step's instructions only when it reaches that step, so the agent spends less of its window holding prose it is not using yet. You will not notice any behavior change. The workflow is identical step for step; the difference is what is in context when. If you ever want to read a step in isolation, the chapters live at `~/.claude/skills/gstack/ship/sections/`.
+
+### Itemized changes
+
+#### Added
+- `bin/gstack-version-bump` — tested version-state CLI (classify / write / repair) with 15 unit tests covering the full FRESH / ALREADY_BUMPED / DRIFT_STALE_PKG / DRIFT_UNEXPECTED matrix.
+- `ship/sections/*.md` — eight on-demand sections (tests, test-coverage, plan-completion, review-army, greptile, adversarial, changelog, pr-body) with a passive `manifest.json` registry.
+- Section pipeline in `gen-skill-docs`: `{{SECTION:id}}` (STOP-Read pointer on Claude, inline on other hosts) and `{{SECTION_INDEX}}` (situation to section table rendered from the manifest).
+- `test/helpers/transcript-section-logger.ts` + `required-reads.ts` and section-loading / manifest-consistency / context-parity tests guarding the carve.
+
+#### Changed
+- `/ship` is a skeleton + sections on Claude; external hosts still receive the full inline skill (no behavior change off Claude).
+- Step 12 calls `gstack-version-bump` instead of inline bash.
+- Parity harness understands carved skills (checks skeleton + sections union; asserts the skeleton actually shrank).
+
+#### For contributors
+- `setup` links `sections/` into the prefixed Claude + Kiro skill dirs; `--host all` now fails the build on any host failure, not just claude.
+- New section templates live at `<skill>/sections/*.md.tmpl`; regenerate with `bun run gen:skill-docs`.
+
 ## [1.53.0.0] - 2026-05-29
 
 ## **Secrets, PII, and legal landmines get caught before they reach a public sink. One redaction engine now guards /spec, /ship, /cso, and the /document-* skills.**

VERSION

@@ -1 +1 @@
-1.53.0.0
+1.54.0.0

package.json

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 {
   "name": "gstack",
-  "version": "1.53.0.0",
+  "version": "1.54.0.0",
   "description": "Garry's Stack — Claude Code skills + fast headless browser. One repo, one install, entire AI engineering workflow.",
   "license": "MIT",
   "type": "module",