Publishing Automation

This guide explains how to use the automated publish workflow in VS Code to commit, push, and create a Pull Request — all from a single command.

Prerequisites

• VS Code with the GitHub Copilot extension installed
• GitHub Pull Requests extension installed
• GitLens / GitKraken extension installed
• You are signed in to GitHub in VS Code
• The repo setting "Allow auto-merge" is enabled (Settings > General > Pull Requests in the GitHub repo)

How It Works

The publish workflow is defined in .github/copilot/publish-docs.prompt.md. When invoked, it instructs the Copilot agent to:

1. Check which files have changed (git status)
2. Stage all modified and new files
3. Generate a commit message summarizing the changes
4. Commit the changes
5. Create a new branch with an incremented counter (e.g. if current branch is ea-276, the new branch will be ea-277)
6. Push the new branch to origin
7. Create a Pull Request targeting main
8. Enable auto-merge on the PR

Once the PR is created, the normal review and pipeline process takes over:

• Team members review and approve the PR
• The YAML pipeline runs checks/build
• When both reviews and checks pass, the PR merges automatically
• The merge to main triggers the deploy pipeline to Azure

How to Use

1. Make your documentation changes as usual.
2. Open the Chat panel in VS Code (Ctrl+Alt+I).
3. Type /publish-docs and press Enter.
4. The agent will show you the changes, generate a commit message, and ask for confirmation before pushing and creating the PR.
5. Done — the PR is created and will auto-merge once approved.

Notes

• The agent will ask for confirmation before pushing and creating the PR. You can review the commit message and adjust if needed.
• You cannot bypass the required review — this is by design to maintain quality control.
• If auto-merge is not enabled on the repo, step 7 will be skipped and you will need to merge manually after approval.
• You can also run the prompt from the Command Palette: Chat: Run Prompt > publish-docs.