remove-ai-watermarks/docs/release-and-distribution.md

Release and distribution

This page describes the release behavior defined in this repository. External registry state can change independently, so verify it during a release.

Published surfaces

A release is complete only after all four published surfaces are verified:

Surface	Published result	Automation
PyPI	The remove-ai-watermarks wheel and source distribution	publish.yml
Homebrew	The remove-ai-watermarks formula in wiltodelta/homebrew-tap	distribute.yml
Hugging Face Space	The Space demo deployed on the new release through a requirements-pin bump in wiltodelta/raiw-hf-space	raiw-hf-space sync workflow; the pin bump is manual, distribute.yml only re-installs the pinned version
ComfyUI Registry	A compatible release of wiltodelta/ComfyUI-remove-ai-watermarks with its own node version	distribute.yml and the node repository's workflows

The GitHub Release is the trigger and release record for this flow. Conda is not a supported publishing surface: this repository has no conda recipe or conda publication job.

Release sources of truth

The package version appears in:

• pyproject.toml;
• src/remove_ai_watermarks/__init__.py;
• the root package entry generated in uv.lock.

Update the first two, then refresh the lock file with uv. Do not edit a line-number-specific location in uv.lock; its package order changes.

Before choosing a version, verify it is absent from git tags, GitHub Releases, and PyPI. An unpublished remote tag still reserves that version; never move it, publish the next version instead.

Publish flow

PyPI publishing is triggered by a published GitHub Release, not by a tag push alone.

The expected sequence:

1. update the version sources and lock file;
2. run the complete project gate;
3. commit the release change;
4. create an annotated vX.Y.Z tag;
5. push the commit and tag;
6. publish the GitHub Release.

.github/workflows/publish.yml then:

1. checks that the release tag matches pyproject.toml;
2. builds the package with uv;
3. publishes with uv publish through PyPI trusted publishing.

The workflow uses GitHub OIDC through the pypi environment. It does not read a PyPI API token from the repository.

Post-release distribution

.github/workflows/distribute.yml runs on the same published-release event. It waits for the matching source distribution to appear on PyPI, then:

• updates the Homebrew tap formula URL and SHA-256;
• triggers a factory rebuild of the Hugging Face Space: this re-installs the version pinned in the Space repo, it does NOT upgrade the demo;
• synchronizes, tests, versions, and publishes the ComfyUI nodes.

Upgrading the Hugging Face Space is a separate, manual step: bump remove-ai-watermarks[visible,heif] in wiltodelta/raiw-hf-space (pyproject.toml, uv lock, and the re-exported requirements.txt), then push. That repository's sync-to-hf.yml mirrors the files onto the Space, which rebuilds on the new pin. Its callback smoke tests run in that repository's CI on every push; they are the scenario check for the demo surface.

The Hugging Face model wiltodelta/raiw-photo-classify is not part of that release fan-out. It holds the photo-classify freeze weights. The library extra classify downloads that snapshot on first use, or reads RAIW_CLASSIFY_WEIGHTS. Update the Hub repo only with .github/workflows/publish-photo-classify-hf.yml (workflow_dispatch, type publish). Full mode downloads the four weight files from the GitHub Release tag photo-classify-freeze-2026-08-31 (or the tag you pass) and uploads them with the card in docs/photo-classify-hf/. Card mode updates the README and operating-point.json only. A library version bump does not upload new heads. Pin a Hub revision in production so a later freeze cannot silently change installed clients.

The workflow can also be started manually with an optional version input.

If a distribution job fails because a repository or Hugging Face credential is invalid, rotate the corresponding GitHub secret and rerun the failed job. A manual Homebrew formula update is the fallback when its automation is blocked.

Source distribution boundary

The wheel includes the package under src/.

The source distribution uses an explicit allowlist for /src, /LICENSE, /README.md, and /pyproject.toml through [tool.hatch.build.targets.sdist] in pyproject.toml. It also defensively excludes /data, /tmp, and /.sc. Keep both controls: calibration captures, test corpora, generated research outputs, and local session state do not belong in the published package archive. Hatchling always adds the root .gitignore to the sdist, so keep its comments generic and free of local operational context. Ignore rules are not the build boundary: data/ is deliberately tracked, while the sdist configuration keeps it and the other excluded paths out of the archive.

Build backend

The package uses hatchling through the unpinned hatchling build requirement in pyproject.toml. Uploading uses uv rather than the older twine-based action.

Other channels

The ComfyUI nodes are maintained and versioned in their own repository. After the matching source distribution appears on PyPI, distribute.yml dispatches that repository's sync workflow with the exact library version and waits for it to finish. The sync updates the dependency floor, runs compatibility tests, bumps the node patch version, and publishes to the ComfyUI Registry only when those tests pass. Its daily schedule remains as a recovery path if a release dispatch is interrupted. The COMFYUI_RELEASE_TOKEN repository secret is a fine-grained token limited to the ComfyUI node repository, with Actions read and write access.

Agent skill

The Agent Skill and Claude plugin live in this repository:

• skills/remove-ai-watermarks/ is the portable Agent Skills package;
• skills/.claude-plugin/plugin.json is the Claude plugin manifest, with source ./skills so an install copies only the skill tree;
• .claude-plugin/marketplace.json makes the repository a Claude Code marketplace.

They are not a fifth required release surface. A CLI change that affects command routing, extras, exit codes, mark keys, or the intended-use boundary must update the skill in the same commit. User-facing install steps live in docs/agent-skill.md.

After the skill files reach the default branch:

• npx skills add wiltodelta/remove-ai-watermarks installs from GitHub;
• SkillsMP can index the public SKILL.md;
• Claude Code users can run /plugin marketplace add wiltodelta/remove-ai-watermarks.

ClawHub and the Claude community marketplace need a separate authenticated publish. Do not treat those listings as complete until the live catalog shows the skill.

Release verification

Forensic transports are versioned independently from the package. Before publishing a change to provenance metadata, provenance reports, broad forensic metadata, or pixel evidence, run their schema 1 contract tests. Additive fields are compatible; renaming a field, changing its type or meaning, changing a signal name or watermark label, or removing a field requires a new output schema. Add the new serializer without removing schema 1 so long-lived consumers can update separately. A package release must never silently substitute its latest schema when a caller explicitly requests an older supported one.

After publication, the verify-release.yml workflow runs automatically once distribute.yml completes and checks every surface below. It can also be dispatched manually with a specific version. Every check fails the job; none of them warns and continues, because a surface nobody can confirm is not a verified surface, with one deliberate exception noted below. The ComfyUI check reads the registry's JSON API and asserts that some published node version declares this library release. It deliberately does NOT proxy through the sync workflow's run status: the node repository also runs that workflow on a daily schedule, so a green nightly run says nothing about whether this release was synced.

Read /nodes/remove-ai-watermarks/versions, not latest_version on the node object. The registry reviews an upload before activating it, and latest_version reports only the active version, so during that review window a correctly published version is indistinguishable from one that was never uploaded. A new version therefore sits in NodeVersionStatusPending for a while after a release; the check reports that state in the run summary and passes, because it is the registry's queue rather than an incomplete release. A missing version, or any other status, fails. The full checklist for completeness:

• both wheel and source distribution exist on PyPI;
• the package version matches the tag;
• the Homebrew formula points to the new source distribution;
• the distribution workflow completed successfully;
• the ComfyUI Registry node requires the new library version;
• the Hugging Face Space serves the new release: its requirements.txt pin matches (raw file via the HF API), the runtime stage is RUNNING after the rebuild, and one live identify and one live visible API call succeed against the running Space;
• a clean install can run remove-ai-watermarks --version.

A clean-install check run immediately after publication can fail with "no version of remove-ai-watermarks==X.Y.Z" even though the simple index already lists it: uv serves its cached pre-release view of the index. Re-run with a fresh cache (UV_CACHE_DIR=$(mktemp -d)) before treating it as a release failure.

The ComfyUI sync run can fail the same way on its own: it resolves the version from the PyPI JSON API (which updates first) but installs the test dependency with pip against the simple index, whose CDN edges lag by minutes. Rerun the failed distribute.yml comfyui job once the simple index lists the release; nothing about the release itself is wrong.

If the release changed CLI routing, extras, exit codes, mark keys, or the intended-use boundary, confirm skills/remove-ai-watermarks/ still matches.