📝 docs: name the auto-merge repo setting as a prerequisite - #9
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The preset sets platformAutomerge, which needs "Allow auto-merge" turned on in the consuming repo. With it off, Renovate silently falls back to merging through its own bot -- it works, but not the way this preset describes, and nothing tells you. Found on the preset's own repo after the transfer: allow_auto_merge was false while the preset advertised platform automerge. If it was wrong here it is wrong in every repo that adopts this by reading the README.
CI on the org is billing-locked, so nothing has validated the presets since the transfer. tooling/validate.sh runs the same checks locally, and can be wired up as a pre-push hook. It is a convenience, not a boundary -- a local hook is skippable and CI stays the real gate. The workflow now calls the same script rather than repeating the file list, so the two cannot drift. The pinned renovate version lives only in the script now; renovate.json carries a custom manager to keep that pin updated, since the built-in githubActionsVersions manager only scans workflow files. The script fails loudly on a missing preset instead of validating a shorter list, which is the failure mode that would otherwise pass silently after a rename.
"Reference it and you are done" is true on GitHub.com and nowhere else. Every other forge needs Renovate self-hosted, which is the largest prerequisite this README had and the one it did not mention. Corrects an assumption made earlier in this work: GitLab has no hosted Mend app either. Renovate's own docs point Bitbucket, Forgejo, Gitea and GitLab all at self-hosting. Also states what a mirror is for, since the two get conflated: mirroring makes local>ownctrl/supply-chain resolvable on that forge. Nothing runs on a mirror.
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The preset sets
platformAutomerge, which uses GitHub's native auto-merge. That requires Allow auto-merge to be enabled in the consuming repo's settings. With it off, Renovate silently falls back to merging through its own bot — it still works, but not the way this preset describes, and nothing surfaces the difference.Found on this repo after the transfer:
allow_auto_mergewasfalsewhile the preset advertised platform automerge. Now enabled here, and documented so adopters do not hit the same gap.Closes a hole in the "reference it and you are done" promise: it was one prerequisite, it is actually two.