/dx-devops-promote

name: dx-devops-promote
description: "Use this skill to drive the full DevOps Center promotion workflow for work items and pipeline stages — validate preconditions, prepare work items, optionally combine work items that share metadata, promote one or more work items or an entire stage to a target pipeline stage, and complete the promotion to finalize the deployment. TRIGGER when the user wants to promote a work item, advance changes to the next environment or stage, combine work items for a single promotion, or move metadata through the release pipeline. The mandatory validate step runs automatically at the start. DO NOT TRIGGER for work item creation or status updates (use dx-devops-work-item-manage), for conflict detection, or for polling an existing promotion's status."
metadata:
  version: "1.0"
  domains: ["Developer Experience"]
  minApiVersion: "58.0"
  relatedSkills:
    - "dx-devops-work-item-manage"
  cliTools:
    - tool: ["jq"]
      semver: ">=1.6"
    - tool: ["sf"]
      semver: ">=2.0.0"
  accessCheck: "(OrgPreferences.ALMDevopsCorePref) && (UserPermissions.UserHasDevOpsCore)"

DevOps Center Promotion

Drives the full promotion workflow in DevOps Center — validate, prepare, optionally combine, promote, and complete — moving work items through the release pipeline. Provides headless, `--json`-driven, idempotent operations for autonomous release workflows in CI. Every promotion begins with a mandatory validate step.

Scope

• **In scope**: Validate promotion preconditions, prepare a work item, combine work items that share metadata into one promotion, promote one or more work items or an entire source stage to a target stage, and complete the promotion
• **Out of scope**: Work item creation/status updates (use `dx-devops-work-item-manage`), conflict detection, polling an existing promotion's status, pipeline or project setup (separate skills)

---

Required Inputs

Gather or infer before proceeding:

• **Promotion target**: one or more specific work items, or all approved work items in a source stage
• **Target stage ID** (required for every promotion command — validate, prepare, combine, promote, and complete): `--target-stage-id` — the pipeline stage to promote to
• **Work item ID(s)** or **source stage ID** — depending on the promotion target. `sf devops promote` takes `--work-item-id` (repeatable) XOR `--stage-id`
• **For combined promotion**: a parent work item ID and one or more child work item IDs that share metadata
• **Target org**: `--target-org <alias>` (required unless the `target-org` config variable is set)

Defaults unless specified:

• Output format: `--json` for headless consumption
• Test level: omit `--test-level` for development-stage deploys (defaults to `NoTestRun`); use `RunLocalTests` for production-stage deploys with Apex

If the user gives a clear request ("promote work item 1fkxx… to stage 1QVxx…", "promote the QA stage to UAT", "combine these work items and promote"), proceed once you have the required IDs.

---

Workflow

All operations use `sf devops` CLI commands with `--json` output. Validate ALWAYS runs first. All promotion commands are keyed on **record IDs**, not work item names — resolve names to IDs first if needed.

Phase 1 — Authenticate and Validate

1. **Verify org authentication** before any operation:

   sf org display --json

• If it fails, instruct the user to run `sf org login web --set-default --alias <alias>`
• Pass `--target-org <alias>` on every subsequent command (required unless the `target-org` config variable is set)

2. **Run the mandatory validate step** — this is non-negotiable and always runs before prepare/combine/promote. `sf devops promotion validate` requires the target stage (`-t/--target-stage-id`) and one or more `-i/--work-item-id`:

   # Capture the output — Phase 2 derives the combine decision from it deterministically.
   VALIDATE_JSON=$(sf devops promotion validate --work-item-id <id> --target-stage-id <target-stage-id> --target-org <alias> --json)

• Validates whether the work item(s) can be promoted to the target stage — checks for VCS and object-permission errors (including the associated-PR requirement) before a promotion is attempted
• Repeat `--work-item-id` to validate multiple work items in one call
• **Success:** `status == 0` and `.result.success == true` — proceed
• **If validation fails** (non-zero exit; e.g. `VCS_ERROR: No pull request exists…`, with `.result.errorType`/`.result.errorDetails` set), STOP. Report the error and do not proceed. If it references metadata overlap, resolve the conflict before retrying
• **Shared components:** when `.result.combineDetails` is non-null, the work items share metadata — validate returns the parent/child grouping and `suggestions`. This is the authoritative signal for the Phase 2 combine decision (see step 4); do not guess whether to combine — the Phase 2 script reads `.result.combineDetails` from `VALIDATE_JSON`

Phase 2 — Prepare (and optionally Combine)

3. **Prepare the work item** for promotion:

   sf devops work-item prepare --work-item-id <id> --target-stage-id <target-stage-id> --target-org <alias> --json

• `--target-stage-id` is required — the same target stage the work item will be promoted to
• Idempotent: re-running a prepared work item is safe — treat as success

4. **Combine work items** — ONLY when the Phase 1 validate step reported shared components (`.result.combineDetails` non-null) or the work items otherwise have dependencies and must promote as one unit. Do not eyeball the JSON — derive the decision and the parent/child IDs deterministically from the saved validate output (`VALIDATE_JSON`):

   # COMBINE == "true" only when validate returned a combineDetails block.
   COMBINE=$(printf '%s' "$VALIDATE_JSON" | jq -r '(.result.combineDetails != null)')
   if [ "$COMBINE" = "true" ]; then
     PARENT_ID=$(printf '%s' "$VALIDA