Publish immutable fixture archives with checksums and a manifest

[knytcomics-ui]

Category

Intermediate

Summary

Automate versioned fixture archives containing JSON, XDRs, documentation, a manifest, and SHA-256 checksums.

Current Behavior

Consumers clone tags and the adapter manually vendors JSON plus generated text modules.

Problem

There is no complete, verifiable fixture artifact for downstream consumers.

Why This Matters

Immutable archives improve reproducibility and supply-chain integrity.

Proposed Scope

Add release generation and verification covering dataset version, source commit, file list, hashes, and counts.

Acceptance Criteria

• A deterministic archive is generated from a clean checkout.
• The manifest contains version, commit, hashes, and counts.
• Verification detects altered, missing, or extra files.
• Release CI publishes the artifact.
• README documents verification.

Technical Considerations

Use existing semantic-version and changelog conventions; avoid runtime npm coupling.

Testing Requirements

Test successful extraction and checksum failures.

Cross-Repository Impact

Provides safer inputs for the adapter and research repositories; coordinate with adapter issue #91.

Out of Scope

Do not replace the adapter synchronization workflow.

Complexity

Release scripting, manifest design, CI, and reproducibility testing.

Impact

High — strengthens reproducible evaluation.

Suggested Labels

intermediate, area: tooling, area: ci, area: cross-repo