📖 [Docs]: Release decisions no longer collide with Dependabot labels

[Marius Storhaug (MariusStorhaug)]

Release guidance now defines the owned release: label set as release:patch, release:minor, release:major, release:pre-release, and release:skip. Bare SemVer labels are explicitly ignored, preventing Dependabot update metadata from becoming a repository release decision.

Changed: One release label contract

Release Management, Automation Labels, PR Format, Dependency Updates, the Natural Language examples, and the VS Code Extension Framework now use the same namespaced values. Prereleases use release:pre-release with one bump label, while non-releasing changes use release:skip alone.

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Technical details

• Replaced release:none and the unnamespaced Prerelease label.
• Recorded Dependabot as the GitHub dependency-update baseline and documented its bare SemVer label behavior.
• Corrected the previous claim that Dependabot's repository-level skip-release compatibility sentinel is ineffective.

Changed surface	Standards checked	Framework docs checked	Result
src/docs/**	Natural Language, Markdown	Release Management, Automation Labels, Dependency Updates, VS Code Extension Framework	Aligned

Relevant issues (or links)

Related work

• References Dependabot's pull-request labeler

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Updates the MSX documentation’s release-label contract to use an owned release: namespace exclusively, so Dependabot’s bare major/minor/patch labels can’t be misread as repository release decisions. This aligns release guidance across “Ways of Working” and the affected capability specs/designs.

Changes:

• Replaces non-releasing guidance (release:none) with release:skip, and documents release:pre-release as a mode used alongside exactly one bump label.
• Updates automation-label documentation to explain the Dependabot label collision mechanism and the skip-release compatibility sentinel.
• Aligns Release Management, Dependency Updates, VS Code Extension Framework, and Natural Language examples to the same namespaced label set and rules.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 8 out of 8 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
src/docs/Ways-of-Working/PR-Format.md	Updates change-type label mapping to release:skip and clarifies release:pre-release usage.
src/docs/Ways-of-Working/Automation-Labels.md	Reframes the owned release label set and documents Dependabot collision avoidance + skip-release sentinel behavior.
src/docs/Coding-Standards/Natural-Language.md	Updates examples to reference release:skip and the new release-label error-message contract.
src/docs/Capabilities/vscode-extension-framework/spec.md	Aligns framework requirements with the updated release decision labels (no default; release:pre-release as optional mode).
src/docs/Capabilities/vscode-extension-framework/design.md	Updates design rules for prerelease requests and release-decision validation using the new labels.
src/docs/Capabilities/release-management/spec.md	Defines the namespaced release-decision contract (release:skip, release:pre-release) and explicitly ignores bare SemVer labels.
src/docs/Capabilities/release-management/design.md	Documents release-label parsing rules and the Dependabot collision rationale under the updated contract.
src/docs/Capabilities/dependency-updates/design.md	Renames the release dimension to “release decision” and updates the Dependabot collision explanation to match the new label set.

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[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 8 out of 8 changed files in this pull request and generated no new comments.

Suppressed comments (1)

Previously missed (1) — in code that hasn't changed since the last review.

src/docs/Capabilities/release-management/design.md:80

• In the "Version computation" label table, the "Valid combination" cells for release:patch/release:minor/release:major say "Exactly one bump label." That reads as if adding release:pre-release would make the set invalid, which contradicts the text immediately below stating release:pre-release may accompany one bump label. Update the table rows so they explicitly allow the optional mode label.

| `release:patch` | Resolve the next patch version. | Exactly one bump label. |
| `release:minor` | Resolve the next minor version. | Exactly one bump label. |
| `release:major` | Resolve the next major version. | Exactly one bump label. |