release.sh printed `WARNING: Smoke tests failed!` and exited 0. That is how four
broken readiness probes shipped unnoticed on 2026-08-10 — the warning scrolled
past in the build log and the release reported success.
It now exits 1, with `MCPCTL_ALLOW_SMOKE_FAILURE=1` as the escape hatch. The
message is explicit that smoke runs LAST, against the installed binary: the
package is already published and installed, so the failure reports fleet
breakage rather than preventing a bad artifact.
Turning the gate on required fixing a latent hang first, or every release would
have blocked on it. `security.test.ts > /inspect SSE endpoint …` waited for a
response body that by design never ends, so it could only settle via the
socket's *inactivity* timeout — and /inspect relays every project's MCP traffic,
so during a full smoke run it is never idle. Run alone it passed and looked
flaky; run with the suite it failed every time.
httpRequest gains `headersOnly`, which resolves on the response headers and
hangs up. The assertion only ever needed the status line.
Verified: full smoke suite 158/158 (was 157/158 with this test timing out); the
gate block lifted verbatim from release.sh exits 1 with a stubbed failing smoke
run, and exits 0 reaching subsequent code under MCPCTL_ALLOW_SMOKE_FAILURE=1.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019wUmrfkVQR6CKcYKxENq7k
