An article can remain queued in the internal vault while its published version goes live on the public site if an unrelated commit arrives during the build process.
Quick solution:
git fetch origin main && git rebase --onto origin/main HEAD~1 HEAD
Prerequisites require that the approved draft, quality sidecar, and referenced raster blobs remain identical to the queued state before rebasing the lifecycle update.
Why Whole Repository SHA Comparison Fails
Comparing the whole repository SHA can reject a safe publication finalization because an unrelated documentation sync or metadata update might alter the main branch tip while the site build is running. When the automated publisher attempts to move the reference using a rigid base commit hash, Git detects a divergence and rejects the update. This occurs even when the specific article inputs, quality sidecar, and referenced raster blobs remain completely unchanged. As discussed in Managing Concurrent Git Commits During Automated, handling concurrent mutations requires isolating the exact files that define the publication state rather than relying on a monolithic repository hash.
Validating Unchanged Files Before a Lifecycle Rebase
Before a lifecycle update is rebased onto a new main branch tip, specific files must remain strictly unchanged. These include the primary markdown draft, the accompanying quality sidecar, and any referenced raster blobs verified during the build process. If any of these files differ between the queued state and the current remote tip, the publication finalization must halt to prevent overwriting newer edits.
Preventing Race Conditions With Final Reference Checks
A final reference check prevents a second race condition by verifying the target reference right before pushing the new commit. By executing a compare-and-swap operation or checking the remote ref against the expected pre-rebase tip using the GitHub REST API Git Trees, the publisher ensures no other workflow updated the vault during the rebase window. If the reference has shifted again, the publisher aborts rather than blindly overwriting the branch.
Recovering When Articles Are Live But Vaults Stay Queued
When an article is verified live on the public site but the internal vault status still records ready-to-publish or failed, safe recovery requires manual or automated reconciliation. Because the content deployment succeeded, engineers must inspect the commit ledger, verify that the remote ref matches the expected lifecycle commit, and manually advance the vault state marker without triggering a duplicate build.
Execution Checklist
- Verify that the article markdown, sidecar, and assets match the queued state.
- Fetch the latest remote changes without modifying local working trees.
- Rebase the publication lifecycle commit onto the new repository tree.
- Confirm the final reference pointer matches before pushing.
- Update the vault status marker to reflect the live publication state.
