User guide

Greenlight adds release readiness and sign-off gates to Jira. Every release gets a board of gates — QA, Security, Docs, Legal, whatever your process needs — each with an owner, checklist items, evidence links, and live-linked Jira issues. A release is ready when every required gate is approved, and every approval, rejection, revocation, and override is kept in a permanent audit trail.

Greenlight runs entirely on Atlassian's Forge platform: no data ever leaves your Atlassian site.

Concepts

• Release — the thing you're shipping: a software version, a feature rollout, or a marketing launch. Lives in one Jira project, optionally linked to a Jira fixVersion. Its status (Planning → In progress → Ready) is computed from its gates, never hand-set; Released and Cancelled are explicit actions.
• Gate — one team's approval: a named checkpoint (e.g. "QA sign-off") with an owner who is accountable for approving it. Gates can be required (block readiness) or optional.
• Item — the evidence inside a gate: checklist entries, evidence links (test runs, scan reports), and linked Jira issues whose status syncs live. Items drive the gate's progress automatically; when the last item completes, the owner is nudged that the gate is ready to sign off.
• Sign-off — the human decision. Approve (with an optional note) or reject (a note is required). Sign-offs are never applied — or revoked — automatically by the app.

Getting started

1. Install Greenlight from the Atlassian Marketplace (Jira Cloud).
2. Open any Jira project → Apps → Greenlight in the project sidebar.
3. Click Create release and pick a starter template — Software Version, Feature Rollout, or Marketing Launch — or start empty. Templates seed the usual gates with sensible checklists.
4. Assign each gate an owner, add items, link the Jira issues that must land.
5. Watch readiness compute itself; sign off gates as teams finish.

Want to see it working before wiring up your own process? On an empty project, click Explore a sample release — it seeds one clearly-marked sample release with gates, items, sign-offs, and notes so every screen shows something real. Remove it any time with one click. It never touches your Jira issues.

The release page

• Gates tab — the gate board. Expand a gate to check items, link issues, attach evidence, and sign off. Colors: green = approved, amber = at risk or awaiting sign-off, red = rejected, gray = not started.
• Notes tab — one release-notes document per release: write it, generate a deterministic draft from completed work, or save a draft from the Rovo agent.
• Report tab — the compliance snapshot: who approved what, when, with what note, plus every override. Copy as markdown, download, or print to PDF.
• Activity tab — the full append-only audit log.
• ⋯ menu — release-level actions: mark released, save as template, archive/unarchive, delete.

When things drift

Greenlight surfaces drift instead of hiding (or "fixing") it:

• A linked issue reopens after its gate was approved → the approval stands (sign-off is a human act), but the drift is audit-logged, flagged on the gate, and shown in the attention strip until a human revokes or confirms.
• A Jira version is released while required gates are red → warning banner and an audit event per unapproved gate.
• A gate is unfinished close to the target date → flagged at-risk on the hub and in the daily sweep.
• Releasing over unapproved gates requires a typed confirmation and a note, recorded permanently as an override.

Archiving vs deleting

• Archive (⋯ menu) hides a release from the hub, the cross-project overview, and attention feeds — but keeps it viewable (hub → Show archived) and keeps its history in analytics. Fully reversible.
• Delete permanently removes the release and its whole audit history after a typed confirmation. Prefer archive.

Permissions

Action	Who
View releases, check items, add evidence	Anyone who can see the project
Sign off a gate	The gate's owner (a release manager may override — flagged in the audit log)
Create/edit/archive/delete releases and gates, save notes, mark released	Release managers (project admins)
Manage global templates	Jira admins

Everything runs as the user, so Jira's own permission model always applies — Greenlight never shows anyone a project they can't browse.

The Rovo agent (optional)

If Rovo is enabled on your site, the Greenlight agent answers questions in chat, grounded in live data: "What's blocking release 2.4?", "Which gates are at risk this week?", "Draft release notes for 2.4". It can also create releases from templates and record sign-offs — write actions always ask for your confirmation first, follow the same permission rules as the UI, and are audit-logged as done via Rovo. Greenlight is fully functional without Rovo.

Insights

The hub's Insights view computes, from your own audit trail: gate cycle time (release created → gate approved), sign-off lead time (last item done → approved), approval/rejection counts, and which teams most often approve last. No AI involved — it's arithmetic over your gate events.

FAQ

Where is my data stored? In Forge SQL — Atlassian-hosted storage inside the Forge platform, in your site's region. Greenlight is egress-free: no external servers, no third-party services, no analytics beacons. It is eligible for Atlassian's Runs on Atlassian program.

What does Greenlight read from Jira? Only what you link: issue key/summary/status for linked issues, project versions, and display names/avatars for people pickers. Reads happen as the requesting user.

Does Greenlight ever change my Jira issues or workflows? No. It never transitions issues, never edits fields, never touches workflows.

Can an approval be revoked automatically? No. If linked work regresses after approval, Greenlight flags it loudly and logs it — revoking is always a human call.

What happens when I uninstall? App storage is removed per Atlassian's Forge platform policy. You can also delete releases in-app beforehand.

Does it work without Rovo? Yes, completely. The agent is a convenience layer over the same data.

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Support — sanyasha.com/greenlight/support

Privacy policy — sanyasha.com/greenlight/privacy