Record upgrade instructions

Contribute an independent fragment on the PR that changes Prisma 8. Release preparation combines fragments into the published app and extension guides; feature PRs do not edit shared transition guides or choose a release number. Read the canonical upgrade instruction lifecycle for storage, release assembly, and checker modes.

Detection signals and routing

Use this skill when a framework change makes tests red in examples/ or packages/3-extensions/ and you fix them by updating the example or extension code rather than reverting the framework change. Those edits are the same translation downstream consumers need.

Directory changed by the PR	Fragment audience	Consumers
examples/	app	Public package API, contract files, on-disk migrations
packages/3-extensions/	extension	Framework SPI and extension authors
Both	Both, independently	Both audiences

Changes in these directories require a declaration, subject to existing coverage-check exclusions. Generated artefacts are not generally exempt: contract format changes require a codemod or re-emission instructions. Genuinely consumer-invisible changes still get an explicit changes: [] declaration, with no prose.

Stacked PRs: compare against the branch the PR actually targets, not always main. Each PR adds its own declaration in its own commits; inherited fragments do not cover a new PR. Do not pool a stack's instructions in its bottom PR.

Throughout this skill, <target> is the target branch (main unless stacked), <base> is its pinned comparison commit, and <head> is the PR head commit.

Authoring workflow

1. Identify affected audiences. Inspect git diff <base>..<head> -- examples/ packages/3-extensions/. If neither directory has relevant changes, the coverage check does not require a declaration.

2. Choose a descriptive pending name. Add upgrade-instructions/pending/<descriptive-name>/<audience>/instructions.md for each affected audience. Avoid collisions with pending work; no random suffix, global registry, historical-name reservation, or shared index is required. Never append to another PR's fragment. A release landing during your PR does not change this unversioned destination.

3. Write the instructions. Retain the existing YAML frontmatter changes[] and Markdown prose format. Each change has a kebab-case id unique within the guide, a one-line summary, optional detection (glob and content predicate), and an optional script path relative to instructions.md. Prose-only transformations omit script; the consumer's agent follows the body.

   Write detection patterns for whole-file matching. The upgrade flows test each matches pattern as new RegExp(pattern), with no flags, against the whole content of a file (upgrade-app.md, step 4). A pattern may span lines. To exclude a file by something elsewhere in it, anchor a lookahead at the start of the input with (?<![\s\S]), not ^, which the m flag turns into a line start.

   Make detection predicates token-precise. Test against both a true positive and the nearest false positive. A moved tag must not match an unchanged tag; excluding an unchanged spelling needs a token boundary:

   matches:      .raw`
   must not fire on: fns.raw`
   too broad:    (?<!fns)\.raw`        also suppresses myfns.raw`
   shipped:      (?<!(?<![\w$])fns)\.raw`
   

   The inner lookbehind restricts the exclusion to the exact fns token.

   Only describe consumer action. Omit narrative about internal renames, dev-only dependency bumps, and incidental generated churn. Changes to @internal/* APIs that no published @prisma/* package re-exports are not consumer action either: a PR that only changes those declares changes: [], even when extension tests had to be updated. If this PR's audience needs no action, use only:

   ---
   changes: []
   ---
   

   No "consumers need not do anything" body prose. Both audiences declare independently, including real-change/no-op combinations.

4. Author optional colocated scripts/assets. TypeScript that Node runs directly (node <script>.ts, so only syntax Node's type stripping accepts; a project made by orm init has no tsx), shell, or codemods are appropriate. Require no network, environment variables, or input beyond the consumer filesystem and bundled assets. Keep relative references inside the fragment's audience directory. For cross-audience changes, copy scripts into both audience directories; do not symlink or import from the other audience. The published clusters remain independently installable.

   Test a script outside the fragment. A script's tests and fixtures live in test/integration/test/upgrade-instructions/<fragment-name>/, where tests can import @internal/* and CI runs them with the integration suite. One constant in that folder, SCRIPT_PATHS, names the path of each audience's copy of the script, so the tests run the files that ship; while the fragment is pending it points into upgrade-instructions/pending/<fragment-name>/. Put fixture projects under the folder's fixtures/. Every test/integration/test/upgrade-instructions/*/fixtures folder is left out of the integration TypeScript project, the single-import-root lint and the scans for the repository's own contracts, so a fixture may hold old-format files and import either root. A test that checks the script against live framework code, such as one that recomputes fixture hashes with @internal/* functions, and a generator that writes fixtures with them, hold only while the fragment is pending: the published script is frozen at its release, and a later framework change would fail them. At release, the release step points SCRIPT_PATHS at the published copy, keeps the before-and-after tests, and freezes the live-code tests and the generator (records what they compute) or deletes them.

5. Validate by execution using the unchanged concrete procedure below. An entry updates consumer code, not the example or extension tests. Do not introduce a separate testing system: a script's own tests (step 4) are ordinary integration tests, and the validation by execution below is still required beside them.

6. Include the fragment and updated example or extension code in the PR. Commit working changes before running the Git-ref check:

   pnpm check:upgrade-coverage --mode pr --prev <base> --head <head>
   

   <head> must include the committed declaration; the check does not inspect uncommitted edits. Link each new fragment directory in the PR description. Review must verify that the instructions actually describe the PR's changes; the gate checks added declarations, readable change lists, and relative script references, not semantic correctness.

Validation by execution

Before merging, run every new entry against the corresponding example or extension code in this repository, starting from its pre-PR state and ending with passing tests. This is the existing per-PR quality bar, not a release-wide migration test.

Workflow per entry (both flows apply for cross-audience entries):

• Open PR: <head> is the PR branch head; <base> is the actual target branch's comparison commit.
• Merged PR: <head> is the merge commit; <base> is its mainline parent. git log --first-parent names both.

Use a disposable checkout for the restoration steps so unrelated working changes are not overwritten. The PR author updates example and extension tests; the upgrade instructions must not change them. The equality check excludes test/ directories; the companion check confirms the entry left those directories exactly as it found them.

App entry (against examples/)

1. Check out <head>, which has the framework change applied.

2. Revert examples/ to its pre-PR state (git restore --source=<base> -- examples/).

3. Run the fragment against the restored example code: invoke colocated scripts per script: references, then walk the prose body for additional instructions.

4. Verify examples/ matches <head> outside test directories:

   git status --porcelain -- examples/ ':(exclude)examples/*/test/**'
   

   It must print nothing, including no newly created files. The entry must reproduce git diff <base>..<head> -- examples/ ':(exclude)examples/*/test/**'.

5. Verify the entry left tests at <base>; the source equality check cannot detect test changes:

   git diff --exit-code <base> -- 'examples/*/test/**'
   git ls-files --others --exclude-standard -- 'examples/*/test/**'
   

   The first command must exit 0 and the second print nothing. An entry must not mutate or create tests to make the next step pass. A file under a test directory that the entry's own script wrote passes when it equals <head> byte for byte.

6. Run pnpm --filter <example-package> test for each touched example. The repo-wide pnpm test:examples also runs examples needing a database and .env (pnpm db:up, then copy .env.example); run it only with those in place.

Extension entry (against packages/3-extensions/)

1. Check out <head>, which has the framework change applied.

2. Revert packages/3-extensions/ to its pre-PR state (git restore --source=<base> -- packages/3-extensions/).

3. Run the fragment against the restored extension code, including referenced scripts and prose.

4. Verify the non-test paths match <head>:

   git status --porcelain -- packages/3-extensions/ ':(exclude)packages/3-extensions/*/test/**'
   

   It must print nothing. The entry reproduces git diff <base>..<head> -- packages/3-extensions/ ':(exclude)packages/3-extensions/*/test/**'.

5. Verify test paths remain at <base>:

   git diff --exit-code <base> -- 'packages/3-extensions/*/test/**'
   git ls-files --others --exclude-standard -- 'packages/3-extensions/*/test/**'
   

   The first command must exit 0; the second must print nothing. A file under a test directory that the entry's own script wrote passes when it equals <head> byte for byte.

6. Verify the matching test suite is green: pnpm test --filter='./packages/3-extensions/*'.

If any check fails, iterate on the entry; do not merge. Classify failures before changing anything, per CI failure classification. A timeout or connection error makes the environment a candidate cause, not a verdict.

PR commit shape

Include:

• Each new upgrade-instructions/pending/<name>/<audience>/instructions.md and any colocated scripts/assets.
• The updated example and extension code, matching the result of applying the instructions outside test directories. The entry neither writes nor updates those tests.
• PR-description references naming the fragment directories, for example upgrade-instructions/pending/migration-metadata-shape/app/ and upgrade-instructions/pending/migration-metadata-shape/extension/.

Both audience copies may share IDs, summaries, or detection predicates; they are independent records. Fixes to either copy use normal PR review. Historical published guidance can also be corrected through normal reviewed PRs, but edits to old guides do not replace a new PR's required pending declaration.

Out of scope

Fragments describe code translation only. Do not add the general bump/install/instructions/validate/commit loop to their bodies: the published app and extension flows own it. Extension exact-pin enforcement remains prisma-8-check-pins from @internal/extension-author-tools.

Release synthesis, archives, skipped unpublished bumps, and release completeness belong to the canonical lifecycle, not feature-PR authoring. No release-wide migration rehearsal is required.