appchangelog-gen.py should emit a localized Android What's New title — a raw literal fails i18n on every release and red-checks all open PRs

[pipiche38]

The issue makes three points precisely, grounded in what I verified in the repo:

1. Root cause — appchangelog-gen.py writes the Kotlin title as a raw literal (title = "{title}"), but the i18n gate requires uiString(R.string.l10n_app_changelog_…). Compose has no auto-extraction, so it needs hand-localizing every release. Apple is unaffected (SwiftUI auto-extracts).
2. Why it keeps hurting everyone — detection already exists (the push: [main] trigger i18n: localize the 9.0.1 What's New title (unblock the coverage gate) #514 added), but it only detects; the fix is still manual, so the raw title lands on main and the whole-tree --ci gate red-checks every open PR on a line none touched. Confirmed with the 9.2.0 evidence + audit output.
3. The fix — make the generator emit the localized reference itself: key = 6-word slug + sha1(title)[:8] (I verified this scheme reproduces existing keys), auto-add the string to values/ + the four focus locales, keep Apple as a raw baseline-tracked title. Plus an optional release.sh preflight.

It also includes the immediate 9.2.0 unblock one-liner (the exact key + strings.xml change) so ryanbr can clear the current red checks the same way as #514, and flags it as a maintainer/tooling issue with the #514 precedent linked.

[pipiche38]

fixed with #885

[ryanbr]

Reopening: this was closed but the generator was never changed, and 9.2.1 hit it again.

Tools/appchangelog-gen.py:60 still writes the Android title as a raw Kotlin literal:

f'            title = "{esc_kt(wn["title"])}",\n'

9.2.0's title was localised by hand in #886 and this closed on the strength of that; 9.2.1's was localised by hand in #916. Two consecutive releases patched manually is the recurrence the issue predicted.

Two things made 9.2.1 worse than a visible red check, both worth recording:

• The release push triggers no CI at all. fork-release.yml pushes with GITHUB_TOKEN, and GitHub does not run workflows on those pushes — there is no run on 7054aef8 or 21e36a2b. main was red with nothing reporting it.
• The audit is a whole-tree gate, not a diff, so it then fails every open PR on a line none of them touched. docs(protocol): document the COMMAND_RESPONSE body (#894, #891) #915 hit it first, which is the only reason it surfaced.

Scope for the actual fix: emit uiString(R.string.<key>) plus the English resource in values/strings.xml, using the existing key convention (first six slug words + sha1(value)[:8] — verified to reproduce 9.2.0's key). The generator cannot supply translations, so it should exit non-zero or warn loudly naming the focus locales still missing the title, turning a silent red into an explicit step in the release checklist.