[cliffhall]

Closes #5343

Description

Amends release skill step 4d (.claude/skills/release/SKILL.md, "The ledger") so a session that has never seen a ledger builds the same page the last three releases did:

• Title: Servers vX.Y.Z Release Ledger, for both the <title> and the <h1>.
• Start from the previous ledger: found through the Release ledger: line of the latest published Release's notes (with the gh release view query that prints it), reusing its stylesheet and section structure and changing content only. The skill names no ledger URL, so it holds nothing that goes stale.
• Required sections added: the SDKs and Toolchain masthead lines, Preparation PRs, Tool schemas against the previous release, LLM client, and Also shipping: advisory fixes, listed in page order alongside the existing ones.
• Issue-table columns named: Issue · Title · What was driven · Observed · Status, each Issue cell tagged client, web UI or probe, each Status a pill (PASS or a named exception).
• A second merge PR: the masthead names both merge PRs with their heads, and the page says which checks ran on which head and what differs between the two trees.

The edit stays inside step 4d.

Server Details

• Server: none (repository-wide)
• Changes to: the release skill (docs for maintainers and agents)

Motivation and Context

See #5343. The v2.0.0 to v2.2.0 ledgers share one design only because each was copied from the last by hand, and the only record of that was a CSS comment in the page. The sections the last two ledgers carried beyond what 4d asked for were the useful ones.

How Has This Been Tested?

No client-observable surface, so targeted probes:

• The new query, run against the live repository, prints the previous ledger's link:

  $ gh release view --repo modelcontextprotocol/servers --json tagName,body \
      --jq '.tagName, (.body | split("\n")[] | select(startswith("Release ledger:")))'
  v2.2.0
  Release ledger: [v2/chore/5330-release-v2.2.0](https://claude.ai/artifact/4QBpF136w3oXcAMVDRJtbe)
  

• That ledger was read back to check the documented structure against it: <title> and <h1> are Servers v2.2.0 Release Ledger; the masthead has Merge PRs (Release v2.2.0: merge v2/main into main #5338 then Release v2.2.0: merge v2/main into main (certifi lock) #5342), SDKs and Toolchain lines; the issue tables have the columns Issue · Title · What was driven · Observed · Status with client / web UI / probe tags and PASS pills; and it carries Preparation PRs, Tool schemas against v2.1.0, LLM client, and Also shipping: advisory fix, in the order the step now lists.
• npm run verify:skills: OK, 11 skills, listing share 3903/4000 (unchanged: the release skill is name-only and its description did not change, so no eval cases change).
• npm run local:gate: EXIT 0.

Breaking Changes

None.

Types of changes

• Bug fix (non-breaking change which fixes an issue)
• New feature (non-breaking change which adds functionality)
• Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing functionality to change)
• Documentation update

Checklist

• I have read the MCP Protocol Documentation (not applicable: no protocol feature is touched)
• My changes follow MCP security best practices (not applicable: skill documentation only)
• I have updated the server's README accordingly (not applicable: no server changes)
• I have added a changeset (npm run changeset) if this changes what a TypeScript server publishes (not applicable: nothing published changes)
• I have tested this with an LLM client (not applicable: no server-facing change; targeted probes above)
• My code follows the repository's style guidelines
• New and existing tests pass locally
• I have added appropriate error handling (not applicable: documentation only)
• I have documented all environment variables and configuration options (not applicable: none added)

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

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[Copilot]

🟢 Approval recommended

No active review issues are reported for the release-ledger documentation update.

No open issues 🎉

What changed in this PR

This documentation-only PR updates release skill step 4d to standardize release ledgers, addressing #5343 without changing server behavior.

Changes:

• Specifies the ledger title and how to find and reuse the previous release’s layout.
• Defines required sections, masthead details, and issue-table columns and status labels.
• Documents how to record multiple merge PRs and identify which checks ran against each head.

File	Description
.claude/​skills/​release/​SKILL.md	Expands step 4d with ledger layout, content, and verification-tracking requirements.

_{Review effort: Balanced}

[cliffhall]

Copilot round 1: clean ("No open issues", 0 inline comments). The review loop has converged on its first clean round, so no further round was requested.