Takeaway: the manual flow (branch → PR → merge → pull main → bump → build → push → publish → update changelog) is tiresome and error-prone. GitHub Actions plus off-the-shelf actions (checkout, ruby/setup-ruby, upload-artifact, codecov, reviewdog, pr-labeler, release-drafter) can automate testing against a Ruby × Rails matrix, linting with inline PR suggestions, PR labeling by branch prefix, drafting categorized release notes, and on `v*.*` tags cutting a GitHub Release with the gem attached and pushing to RubyGems.