Releases are made by release-please from the Conventional Commits on main. Nobody edits the version or the changelog by hand.

1. Commits land on main (feat(...), fix(...), ...). release-please keeps a pull request "chore(main): release X.Y.Z" open that collects them, updates CHANGELOG.md and the version in Xenvious/Properties/AssemblyInfo.cs (the lines marked // x-release-please-version).
2. The version is 1.<GTA>.<n>: the middle number follows the GTA V update (73 for GTA 1.73), the last one counts Xenvious releases for it. So every release, feat or fix, only raises the last number ("versioning": "always-bump-patch" in release-please-config.json). docs, refactor, chore and the like do not appear in the changelog, so the subject line of a feat or fix commit is what users read.
3. Merging that pull request tags vX.Y.Z and creates the GitHub release with the same notes. The second job of .github/workflows/release.yml builds that tag and attaches Xenvious.exe and Xenvious.exe.sha256.
4. Xenvious finds the release on its next start (Helper Classes/Updater.cs), shows the notes, downloads the exe, checks it against the SHA256 and swaps itself. The embedded CHANGELOG.md provides "New in X.Y.Z" afterwards.

.github/workflows/nightly.yml builds main every night at 01:00 UTC and on demand (Actions → Nightly → "Run workflow", or gh workflow run nightly.yml). The scheduled run skips the build when main has not moved since the last nightly.

• Each run replaces one pre-release with the tag nightly. Its title carries the version, its notes the feat/fix subjects since the last release tag. It has the same Xenvious.exe, Xenvious.exe.sha256 and build provenance as a release.
• The version is the release version plus the run number as a fourth part, 1.73.3.12. That is newer than release 1.73.3 and older than the next release 1.73.4, so a nightly player moves on to that release by itself. The fourth part exists only in the built exe; main, the changelog and release-please do not change.
• Players only get it with Settings → Updates → "Get nightly builds" on. Pre-releases never count as releases/latest, so everyone else keeps getting releases only. Turning the option off on a nightly build offers to go back to the latest release.

The manifest (.release-please-manifest.json) starts at 2.71.11, the last version before the public repository. To make the first public release 1.73.0, the commit that starts it carries this footer:

Release-As: 1.73.0

Xenvious only offers a release whose version is higher than its own (Helper Classes/Updater.cs), so versions must only go up. Exes numbered 2.x or 3.73.0 from before this scheme never offer 1.73.x; replace them by hand once.

release-please opens pull requests with the workflow token, which GitHub refuses unless Settings → Actions → General → "Allow GitHub Actions to create and approve pull requests" is on.

The first Xenvious release for a new GTA update raises the middle number. Put the version in the footer of the commit that adds the new offsets, for example for GTA 1.74:

Release-As: 1.74.0

1. ./xupdate.sh <build> and ./xupdate.sh enhanced-<build> in ysc-global-updater refresh OfflineData and Generated/.
2. Build and test in the game.
3. Push fix(offsets): support GTA build <build>.
4. Merge the release pull request. Users get the update on their next start.