A release is not a moment of decision, it is a plan written before the moment. The plan names the version, the artifacts, the checks, and the order of the steps, so the release itself is reading a list rather than choosing under pressure. Everything that makes a release late at night is removed by writing it down in advance.
About 1 min of reading
Write the gates.
The list
Before you run it, say out loud what it will print. Then open the answer.
The abort
Before you run it, say out loud what it will print. Then open the answer.
Read the first example one line at a time. A line that prints shows what appears on screen; the rest set things up quietly.
The plan says what to do if a gate fails. A release with no abort path is a release where a failure is handled by improvising, which is where a bad version gets shipped.
The plan for a release is a file in the branch. Six months later, the reason a version was cut is in that file, and it is the only place that answer survives.
The version number is decided before the work starts, and the work is then done against it. Deciding after is where a number gets chosen to fit what happened, which is the version that carries no meaning.
The checks that must pass: tests green, changelog written, tag on remote, lock committed, eval score acceptable. A release is the list passing, and the list is what makes 'we shipped' a verifiable claim.
Build, test, tag, publish, announce. The order matters, because publishing before tagging means an artifact with no reference, and an announcement before a build is a lie.
Each one is defined here on this site. Open the entry for the full definition and the other words it points at.