try out blacksmith for releases

[juliusmarminge]

What Changed

Why

UI Changes

Checklist

• This PR is small and focused
• I explained what changed and why
• I included before/after screenshots for any UI changes
• I included a video for animation/interaction changes

---

Note

Medium Risk
Workflow-only changes, but they affect CI and the release build/publish pipeline; misconfigured runner images or disabled Windows arm64/manifest steps could break releases or artifact packaging.

Overview
Moves CI quality and release_smoke jobs, plus all release.yml jobs, from GitHub-hosted runners to Blacksmith runner images with increased CPU sizing.

Updates the release build matrix to use Blacksmith runners for macOS/Linux/Windows builds, and comments out the Windows arm64 build as well as the Windows updater-manifest renaming/merge steps (left as opt-in if arm64 builds are re-enabled).

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit 35af9a9. Bugbot is set up for automated code reviews on this repo. Configure here.}

Note

Switch release and CI workflow jobs to Blacksmith runners

• Migrates all Ubuntu jobs in ci.yml and release.yml from standard GitHub-hosted runners to blacksmith-8vcpu-ubuntu-2404 and blacksmith-32vcpu-ubuntu-2404.
• Updates macOS build runners from macos-14/macos-15-intel to blacksmith-12vcpu-macos-26, and Windows x64 from windows-2022 to blacksmith-32vcpu-windows-2025.
• Disables the Windows arm64 build matrix entry and comments out per-arch Windows updater manifest renaming and merging steps.
• Behavioral Change: Windows arm64 releases are no longer built, and Windows updater manifest handling is disabled for this run.

^{Macroscope summarized 35af9a9.}

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✨ Finishing Touches

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[cursor]

Cursor Bugbot has reviewed your changes and found 1 potential issue.

Autofix Details

Bugbot Autofix prepared a fix for the issue found in the latest run.

• ✅ Fixed: macOS runner instance type may not exist
  • Changed blacksmith-12vcpu-macos-26 to blacksmith-6vcpu-macos-26 since Blacksmith only offers 6vCPU macOS runners.

Or push these changes by commenting:

@cursor push f0dec8145f

Preview (f0dec8145f)

diff --git a/.github/workflows/release.yml b/.github/workflows/release.yml
--- a/.github/workflows/release.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/release.yml
@@ -141,7 +141,7 @@
       matrix:
         include:
           - label: macOS arm64
-            runner: blacksmith-12vcpu-macos-26
+            runner: blacksmith-6vcpu-macos-26
             platform: mac
             target: dmg
             arch: arm64

_{You can send follow-ups to the cloud agent here.}

[cursor]

macOS runner instance type may not exist

Medium Severity

The macOS arm64 build runner is set to blacksmith-12vcpu-macos-26, but Blacksmith's documented macOS runners only come in 6vCPU configurations (blacksmith-6vcpu-macos-*). If this instance type doesn't exist, the macOS arm64 build job will fail, blocking the entire release pipeline since publish_cli, release, and finalize all depend on the build job completing.

 

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit ea67a3f. Configure here.}

[macroscopeapp]

Approvability

Verdict: Needs human review

This PR modifies release pipeline infrastructure by switching to Blacksmith runners and disabling Windows arm64 builds. Open review comments identify potential issues with macOS runner configurations that could break the release pipeline - specifically, the specified runner instance types may not exist and cross-compilation concerns for x64 builds on ARM runners.

^{You can customize Macroscope's approvability policy. Learn more.}

[cursor]

Cursor Bugbot has reviewed your changes and found 1 potential issue.

There are 2 total unresolved issues (including 1 from previous review).

^{Bugbot Autofix is ON, but it could not run because the branch was deleted or merged before autofix could start.}

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit 35af9a9. Configure here.}

[cursor]

macOS x64 build moved to ARM-only runner

Medium Severity

The macOS x64 build now uses the same ARM-based blacksmith-12vcpu-macos-26 runner as the arm64 build, replacing the former Intel-native macos-15-intel runner. This means x64 artifacts are now cross-compiled from ARM64. The project depends on node-pty, a native C++ module, and electron-builder has documented issues cross-compiling native modules across macOS architectures (linker errors, wrong-arch binaries). The previous config deliberately used an Intel runner for x64 builds.

Additional Locations (1)

• .github/workflows/release.yml#L143-L144

 

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit 35af9a9. Configure here.}