Rowboat Apps Registry

The public registry for Rowboat apps.

One JSON record per app maps a globally unique package name to the GitHub repository that hosts it. That is all the registry stores — versions never touch this repo. Each app version is a GitHub Release on the app's own repository, carrying two assets:

• <name>.rowboat-app — the app bundle (ZIP)
• rowboat-app.json — a standalone copy of the manifest (powers quota-free catalog details and update checks)

Layout

Path	Purpose
apps/<name>.json	One record per published app
removed/<name>.json	Takedowns — the record moved here verbatim plus removedAt and reason; removed names stay retired
schema/registry-record.schema.json	JSON Schema enforced by the validation Action
.github/workflows/validate-and-merge.yml	Validates publish PRs and auto-merges them

Record format

apps/<name>.json:

{
    "schemaVersion": 1,
    "name": "my-app",
    "owner": "octocat",
    "repo": "octocat/my-app",
    "description": "What the app does.",
    "iconUrl": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/octocat/my-app/HEAD/dist/icon.png",
    "createdAt": "2026-07-06T00:00:00Z"
}

• name — 3–64 chars matching ^[a-z0-9]+(-[a-z0-9]+)*$. Globally unique and immutable once published; the first publisher owns it. Forks must take a new name.
• owner — the publisher's GitHub login; must equal the PR author.
• repo — the public GitHub repository hosting the app's releases.
• description — optional, ≤ 500 chars, shown in the catalog.
• iconUrl — optional HTTPS icon URL for catalog listings.
• createdAt — ISO 8601 timestamp of first publication.

A record is written once, at first publish, and never modified. Publishing a new version is just a new GitHub Release on the app repo — no registry change.

Publishing

Rowboat's guided publish does all of this for you. The manual path, for developers bringing their own repo or build:

1. Host the app in a public GitHub repo you control. Create a release tagged v<version> (strict semver) and attach both assets: <name>.rowboat-app and rowboat-app.json.
2. Fork this repo and add exactly one file, apps/<name>.json, matching schema/registry-record.schema.json.
3. Open a PR against main. The validation Action either squash-merges it and comments published: <name>, or closes it with a comment whose first line is rejected: <code>.

Monorepo constraint: version discovery always reads the repo's latest release (releases/latest/download/…). If one repo hosts several registered apps, every release must attach every registered app's asset pair — otherwise resolution for the other apps breaks whenever any one app releases. One repo per app avoids this.

Validation checks

A publish PR merges only if all of the following hold, checked in order; the first failure closes the PR with the code shown:

1. The PR targets main — invalid_base
2. It adds exactly one new file under apps/ and changes nothing else (records are add-only) — invalid_diff
3. The filename is apps/<name>.json with a valid package name — invalid_filename
4. The file is valid JSON, validates against the schema, and record.name equals the filename stem — invalid_record
5. record.owner equals the PR author — owner_mismatch
6. The name is not already registered — name_taken — and not retired — name_retired
7. record.repo exists and is public — repo_not_found, repo_not_public — and the PR author controls it (owns it, or authored its latest release) — repo_not_owned
8. https://github.com/<repo>/releases/latest/download/<name>.rowboat-app exists (existence probe only; bundles are not downloaded or inspected) — release_asset_missing

If every check passes but the merge itself fails (infrastructure hiccup), the Action comments error: merge_failed and leaves the PR open for a maintainer.

Two PRs racing for the same name serialize in a per-name concurrency group; the loser fails the availability check.

Moderation

• Takedowns: maintainers move apps/<name>.json to removed/<name>.json, adding removedAt and reason. Removed names stay retired.
• Record corrections (repo renames, transfers): the Action rejects modifications to existing records, so open an issue — corrections are maintainer-reviewed.
• To report an app, open an issue on this repo.