Throttle nightly release workflow to every 3 hours

[juliusmarminge]

Summary

• Changed the scheduled release cadence from once daily at 9:00 UTC to every 3 hours.
• Added a preflight change check for scheduled runs so nightly releases only proceed when main has advanced since the last nightly-v* tag.
• Skips redundant scheduled releases when there are no new commits, while still allowing manual dispatch and tag-triggered releases.

Testing

• Not run (workflow-only change).
• Reviewed the updated GitHub Actions logic for scheduled runs, tag releases, and manual dispatch paths.
• Confirmed the new check_changes job gates preflight only for scheduled runs.

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Note

Low Risk
Workflow-only changes that adjust schedule and add a simple git-tag/commit comparison gate; main risk is inadvertently skipping/triggering scheduled nightlies if tagging or fetch behavior differs from expectations.

Overview
Nightly releases are now scheduled to run every 3 hours instead of once daily.

For scheduled runs, a new check_changes job compares HEAD to the most recent nightly-v* tag and gates preflight so the workflow skips publishing when there are no new commits since the last nightly (manual dispatch and tag-triggered releases still proceed).

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit 10e944b. Bugbot is set up for automated code reviews on this repo. Configure here.}

Note

Throttle nightly release workflow to every 3 hours and skip runs with no changes

• Changes the cron schedule in release.yml from once daily (0 9 * * *) to every 3 hours (0 */3 * * *).
• Adds a check_changes job that compares HEAD to the last nightly-v* tag and sets a has_changes output.
• The preflight job now depends on check_changes and skips on scheduled runs when no new commits exist since the last nightly tag.

^{Macroscope summarized 10e944b.}

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✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

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[macroscopeapp]

Approvability

Verdict: Approved

This is a minor CI/CD workflow change that adjusts the nightly release schedule frequency and adds a check to skip releases when there are no new changes. No production code or runtime behavior is affected.

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