ci: ship core's dist to the PR visual gate

[cixzhang]

Problem

Every PR that touches a component gets a red pr-visual, outside contributors'
included — #5466,
#5462,
#5468,
#5018. The job crashes before it
shoots anything:

Error [ERR_MODULE_NOT_FOUND]: Cannot find module
  '…/packages/themes/butter/node_modules/@astryxdesign/core/dist/theme/index.js'
  imported from …/packages/themes/butter/dist/source.mjs

Root cause: @astryxdesign/core is not built when the gate runs. A built
theme is not self-contained — dist/source.mjs keeps
import {defineTheme} from '@astryxdesign/core/theme' as an external, so
loadThemeOverrides importing it executes that import, pnpm resolves it through
the workspace link, and core's exports map sends it to
packages/core/dist/theme/index.js.
#5477 ships
packages/themes/*/dist/ and nothing else, and pr-visual never builds, so
that file is absent.

The other two candidates are both ruled out, not assumed:

• The symlink farm is fine. pnpm install --frozen-lockfile in the job
  restores packages/themes/butter/node_modules/@astryxdesign/core → ../../../../core;
  Node resolved through it, which is why the error names a file inside the
  package rather than "Cannot find package".
• The exports map is fine. "./theme" maps to ./dist/theme/index.js. A
  blocked subpath would be ERR_PACKAGE_PATH_NOT_EXPORTED, not a missing file.

Solution

• Ship core's dist from build-storybook, which has already built it, rather
  than adding a build step to pr-visual — #5477's
  reasoning, unchanged.
• Carry it in the existing artifact instead of a second one: two search paths, so
  the artifact roots at their common ancestor packages/ and the download
  unpacks there. Renamed themes-<hash> → dists-<hash> because it is no longer
  only themes.

Impact

Every component PR in the repo, including outside contributors'. pr-visual is
continue-on-error, so this was never blocking a merge — it was showing every
contributor a red check they could do nothing about.

API

None. Workflow-only.

Theme targets

None.

Breaking

None. The artifact is internal to one workflow run and consumed only by
pr-visual.

Performance & resources

One artifact, ~14 MB / ~1600 files larger; no extra job, no extra build.
Building core inside pr-visual instead would cost minutes of every component
PR's CI.

Visual evidence

None — this is CI plumbing, no pixels change.

Testing

• Local reproduction of the exact CI failure: fresh worktree,
  pnpm install --frozen-lockfile, themes' dist/ copied in and nothing else
  (the state #5477 leaves) →
  same ERR_MODULE_NOT_FOUND on the same path. Dropping packages/core/dist/
  in and changing nothing else → all eight themes import and yield their
  component maps (butter 21 targets, probe 268, …), and
  gate.mjs plan gets past theme loading to the Storybook index it downloads
  in CI.
• The real job on this PR. A workflow-only PR skips pr-visual by design
  (check-components finds no component change), so this branch carried a
  throwaway commit touching Spinner.tsx to arm it. That commit is dropped
  before merge; the run it produced is linked in the comments.

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Project	Deployment	Actions	Updated (UTC)
astryx	Ready	Preview	Aug 25, 2026 5:06am

[cixzhang]

Proof this fixes it, since a CI-only fix cannot be proven locally: this branch
briefly carried a throwaway commit touching Spinner.tsx, purely to arm
pr-visual (a workflow-only PR skips it by design — check-components finds no
component change). That commit is now dropped; the run it produced:

pr-visual on 6bd4892 — success,
every step green including Download built themes and core and the gate itself.
Its verdict.json:

{"status": "pass", "components": ["Spinner"],
 "counts": {"total": 8, "unchanged": 2, "changed": 0, "added": 6, "failed": 0}}

Eight shots taken and compared — the ERR_MODULE_NOT_FOUND is gone. (The six
"added" are Spinner story keys with no baseline on gh-pages yet, not failures.)

[github-actions]

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No new or modified components detected.

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No component packages changed.

Accessibility Audit

Status: No accessibility violations detected.

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