The Release Decision attaches a test run to the moment a prompt change ships. The person sees the results beside the change. The check follows the review: a run with changes still awaiting a decision does not pass, and a denied change fails it. The team decides which regressions block and which only warn. The decision is recorded with the evidence that informed it, and accepted answers become the baselines for the next version.
When to Use It
Prompt changes reach real humans
A regression found after release is expensive
The team wants a record of what was known at ship time
When Not To
The change is internal and reversible in a minute
No eval set exists yet; write one first
The result would be ignored; fix that before adding a step
Three views
The exchange between the human, the agent and the system the agent acts on; who holds each part of it; and the component that implements it.
01 · the interaction
02 · who holds what
01Attached evalThe eval set and rubric tied to this release step
02ResultPass, warn or block, with the regressions named and the unreviewed changes counted
03DecisionThe person ships, holds, or ships with a known regression
04ThresholdWhich regressions block and which only warn, set by the team
05ReceiptThe decision and its evidence, recorded
03 · the component
release decision · primitives
Attached eval
Result
Decision
Threshold
Receipt
primitive wireframe, generated from the anatomy — the installable component ships when this
pattern's anatomy stabilizes
Swap snapshots for answers and the loop transfers to any agent that produces output a human reviews. The baseline moves only when a reviewer accepts a change, so no answer is approved twice and the build blocks until the review happens.
A threshold is a decision made once, by whoever wrote the workflow file. The product does not ask whether this regression should block or only warn; that question needs a screen, not a setting.
A vendor retiring the surface moves the interaction into the team's own tools. That is an argument for patterns that outlive any one product, and for baselines the team owns.
Three words on the release check beat a dashboard that goes unopened. The open question is who decides: failing the job on a regression is a setting, and a person still owns the call.
Block or warn: a hard block on each regression stops shipping; a warning on each regression gets ignored. The team sets which is which.
Whose call: an automated check can hold a release, and someone still owns the decision. Name the person.
Interaction or plumbing: the check runs in the deploy system, and the decision is a moment a person lives through. This pattern covers the moment.
The Story So Far
Sep 11, 2026Added to the Watching list from the prompt-evals brief and the 2026-09-11 vendor pass; the Chromatic review loop shapes the comparison and release entries.