[Helen Gao (helen229)]

Summary

Adds process-awareness coverage for #15328: answer an open "what is next?" question from the release plan's current lifecycle state instead of guessing or starting an action.

Changes

• Four mock workflows cover pending API review, approved specs without SDK generation, generated SDKs awaiting review/release, and completed releases.
• All four competing release-plan, generation, and release skills remain mounted. Every case requires reading the plan and forbids generation, release, and plan-update calls.
• Plan-status guidance and its plugin mirror now keep next-step questions read-only. Linked SDK PRs are not treated as proof of merge or release readiness.
• Lifecycle fixtures coexist with main's API-version selector validation. The pending-review fixture no longer contradicts the readiness mock.
• Serialization regressions verify that cached PR status is omitted. Rubrics use the fields agents actually receive rather than requiring that hidden field.
• Merged current main, including the landed abandonment guard, normally and preserved published changelog history. Pending notes use 0.6.56 (Unreleased). The whole PR contains twelve files.

Sync Validation Fix

The skill edit was introduced in merge commits. The old sync step used git format-patch, which skipped those commits and produced no patch despite the real skill diff. A focused helper now creates a mail patch from the final directory delta using a temporary Git object. Source refs and the existing downstream patch, merge, and approval behavior are unchanged.

• Five Git regressions pass, including the formerly empty merge-only case, applying the generated patch to a clean consumer, pattern filtering, and source-ref preservation.
• The actual PR skill delta produces a nonempty one-file patch matching the final skill content.
• The regressions are discovered by the existing common PowerShell CI suite; scoped script analysis has no warnings or errors.
• Hosted sync run 7007002 has passed patch creation and CreateSync. Downstream sync PR verification and its normal approval gates are not claimed complete.
• The hosted Windows common-test run caught a missing YAML module in the new wiring assertion. The test now uses the repository's CompatibleConvertFrom-Yaml bootstrap helper; all five focused regressions pass again. The corrective test-only follow-up is published, and its fresh hosted result remains a required gate.
• The CLI source tree is unchanged by the sync fix. The CLI and workflow results below were run on the preceding source-identical CLI revision; they were not redundantly rerun for the PowerShell-only fix.

Validation

• Current pinned Vally 0.19.0, Node 24.14.1, and gpt-6.1-sol: 4/4 workflow cases passed, with all skill, tool-call, and judgment graders passing. The explicit 1.0 threshold is unchanged. Each trial only loaded the plan skill and called the plan lookup.
• 20/20 focused lifecycle tests passed.
• Full non-integration CLI suite: 3,620 passed, 32 not executed; mock suite: 93 passed; zero failures.
• Strict production/mock Release builds, normal Release solution build, package creation, and validation of the changelog inside the produced package passed.
• Canonical skill and workflow strict lint and pinned Prettier 3.8.4 checks passed. The added guidance is identical in the plugin mirror.

The first current-model run exposed contradictory mock readiness, obsolete cached-status expectations, and unnecessary readiness checks. Those issues were repaired before the passing runs. Safety tool-call restrictions and the 1.0 threshold are unchanged; state rubrics now use observable fields. These are local mock validations, not a live release or a claim that hosted CI has finished.

The existing plugin directory/name mismatch and three async-without-await warnings in main's onboarding mocks are unchanged. Strict solution-wide warning-as-error compilation is not claimed; normal solution compilation and strict production compilation passed.

Fixes #15328

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[Copilot]

🟡 Changes recommended

Several fixtures diverge from production release-plan states, and one scenario permits the action it intends to prohibit.

Once you've addressed the issues Copilot identified, you can request another Copilot review.

Pull request overview

Adds workflow evaluation coverage for release-plan lifecycle guidance.

Changes:

• Adds four release-plan lifecycle fixtures.
• Adds Vally scenarios validating state-aware next-step responses.

File summaries

File	Description
GetReleasePlanHandler.cs	Provides lifecycle-specific mock release plans.
release-plan-next-step.eval.yaml	Tests next-step guidance across four lifecycle stages.

Review details

• Files reviewed: 2/2 changed files
• Comments generated: 6
• Review effort level: Balanced