id: task-70 title: 'CI: eliminate extra binary download' status: Done assignee:

• '@codex' created_date: '2025-06-15' updated_date: '2025-06-15' labels:
• ci
• packaging dependencies: []

Description

Review the CI and release workflows to package platform-specific binaries directly through npm. The goal is to let users run bun add -g backlog.md on any platform and receive the correct compiled binary without a separate download step. The current solution downloads the binary from GitHub releases because bundling all binaries would exceed npm's size limit (~80MB each).

Acceptance Criteria

• [x] Release workflow builds and publishes one npm package per platform containing its binary only.
• [x] The main backlog.md package depends on the correct platform package so installation pulls the binary automatically.
• [x] Documentation explains the simplified global install.

Implementation Notes

The platform-specific package publishing was not working because:

1. The publish-binaries job was missing the npm-publish dependency, causing potential race conditions
2. The job wasn't checking out the repository, so it couldn't access LICENSE and README files

Changes made:

• Fixed the publish-binaries job to depend on both build and npm-publish jobs
• Added actions/checkout@v4 step to access repository files
• Removed old download scripts (cli-download.cjs and getBinaryName.cjs) that are no longer needed
• The CLI wrapper (scripts/cli.cjs) already properly resolves platform packages

The solution allows users to install with npm i -g backlog.md or bun add -g backlog.md and automatically get the correct platform binary through npm's optional dependencies mechanism.