Cache desktop build assets in CI and release workflows

[juliusmarminge]

Summary

• Switch CI to split Bun/Turbo and Playwright caches into restore/save steps for better cache reuse.
• Replace desktop artifact uploads in the release workflow with cached per-platform asset bundles.
• Add explicit staging and validation steps when collecting release assets to fail fast on missing outputs.
• Update the release publish job to restore platform-specific desktop assets before merging updater manifests.

Testing

• Not run (workflow-only changes).
• Verified the release workflow now stages assets from release-artifacts/desktop-* before publishing.
• Verified CI and release cache keys are scoped by platform/arch and run metadata to avoid collisions.

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Note

Medium Risk
Release pipeline now depends on Actions cache entries (restore/save + cross-OS archives) instead of uploaded artifacts, so cache misses/evictions or key mismatches could break publishing. Changes are workflow-only but affect critical build/release automation.

Overview
Improves CI caching behavior by splitting Bun/Turbo and Playwright caches into explicit actions/cache/restore + conditional actions/cache/save steps, saving only on cache miss.

Changes release asset handoff by replacing upload-artifact/download-artifact with per-platform/arch cached bundles (release-artifacts/desktop-*) keyed by run metadata, then explicitly restoring and staging them into release-assets with fail-fast validation before publishing/merging manifests.

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit 2319620. Bugbot is set up for automated code reviews on this repo. Configure here.}

Note

Cache desktop build assets in CI and release workflows

• Splits actions/cache into separate restore and conditional save steps in ci.yml for Bun/Turbo and Playwright caches, so saves only occur on cache misses.
• In release.yml, replaces actions/upload-artifact with actions/cache/save for desktop build artifacts, writing outputs to per-matrix directories keyed by run ID, platform, arch, and attempt.
• The publish_cli job now restores each platform's cache explicitly with fail-on-cache-miss: true, then stages all assets into a flat release-assets directory with validation that no directory is empty.
• Behavioral Change: artifact storage for desktop builds moves from GitHub artifact uploads to the Actions cache; any workflow that previously relied on download-artifact for these assets will no longer find them.

^{Macroscope summarized 2319620.}

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[cursor]

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

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

• ✅ Fixed: Cross-OS cache restore fails without enableCrossOsArchive
  • Added enableCrossOsArchive: true to the cache/save step in the build job and all four cache/restore steps in the release job, ensuring the runner OS is excluded from the cache version hash and cross-OS cache lookups succeed.

Or push these changes by commenting:

@cursor push 5ff99450c1

Preview (5ff99450c1)

diff --git a/.github/workflows/release.yml b/.github/workflows/release.yml
--- a/.github/workflows/release.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/release.yml
@@ -358,6 +358,7 @@
         with:
           path: release-artifacts/desktop-${{ matrix.platform }}-${{ matrix.arch }}
           key: release-assets-${{ github.run_id }}-${{ matrix.platform }}-${{ matrix.arch }}-${{ github.run_attempt }}
+          enableCrossOsArchive: true
 
   publish_cli:
     name: Publish CLI to npm
@@ -440,6 +441,7 @@
           restore-keys: |
             release-assets-${{ github.run_id }}-mac-arm64-
           fail-on-cache-miss: true
+          enableCrossOsArchive: true
 
       - name: Restore macOS x64 desktop assets
         uses: actions/cache/restore@v5
@@ -449,6 +451,7 @@
           restore-keys: |
             release-assets-${{ github.run_id }}-mac-x64-
           fail-on-cache-miss: true
+          enableCrossOsArchive: true
 
       - name: Restore Linux x64 desktop assets
         uses: actions/cache/restore@v5
@@ -458,6 +461,7 @@
           restore-keys: |
             release-assets-${{ github.run_id }}-linux-x64-
           fail-on-cache-miss: true
+          enableCrossOsArchive: true
 
       - name: Restore Windows x64 desktop assets
         uses: actions/cache/restore@v5
@@ -467,6 +471,7 @@
           restore-keys: |
             release-assets-${{ github.run_id }}-win-x64-
           fail-on-cache-miss: true
+          enableCrossOsArchive: true
 
       - name: Stage desktop assets
         shell: bash

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^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit a2460de. Configure here.}

[macroscopeapp]

Approvability

Verdict: Approved

Changes are limited to CI/CD workflow files, optimizing how desktop build artifacts are cached between jobs. No runtime code is affected, and the modifications follow standard GitHub Actions caching patterns with added validation checks.

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[juliusmarminge]

@cursor push 5ff9945