Fixed Renovate automerge schedule

[sagzy]

closes https://linear.app/ghost/issue/PROD-2695

• as merging to main ships to production for ActivityPub, we'd like to avoid merging dependency updates during the night or over weekends, when no engineer is online
• Fixed previous automerging config by switching to Renovate automerge over Github automerge (platformAutomerge = false), as per Renovate docs: https://docs.renovatebot.com/configuration-options/#automergeschedule
• Updated the automerge schedule to be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings UTC (08:00 - 11:59 UTC), to be during working hours of the team that owns the ActivityPub workload (GMT/UTC)

[coderabbitai]

Walkthrough

Updates .github/renovate.json5 to change automerge scheduling from Monday–Wednesday 08:00–16:00 UTC to Monday–Thursday 08:00–11:59 UTC, and explicitly sets platformAutomerge: false. Retains unrestricted PR creation timing, existing lockFileMaintenance, and packageRules. Adds explanatory comments clarifying platform automerge behavior and scope.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 2 (Simple) | ⏱️ ~10 minutes

Possibly related PRs

• Restricted Renovate auto-merge to Mon/Tue/Wed during working hours #909 — Also modifies .github/renovate.json5 to adjust automerge scheduling, overlapping in purpose and file touched.

Pre-merge checks and finishing touches

✅ Passed checks (3 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title Check	✅ Passed	The title succinctly identifies the update to Renovate’s automerge schedule, accurately reflecting the primary configuration change made in this pull request and doing so in clear, concise language.
Description Check	✅ Passed	The description directly addresses the changeset by explaining the rationale for updating the automerge configuration, linking the relevant issue, and detailing the specific schedule and platformAutomerge adjustments.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changes. Docstring coverage check skipped.

✨ Finishing touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Post copyable unit tests in a comment
• Commit unit tests in branch fix/automerge-schedule

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📜 Recent review details

Configuration used: CodeRabbit UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 1f1e6b1 and f3289c5.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• .github/renovate.json5 (1 hunks)

⏰ Context from checks skipped due to timeout of 90000ms. You can increase the timeout in your CodeRabbit configuration to a maximum of 15 minutes (900000ms). (1)

• GitHub Check: build / Build Docker Images (linux/amd64, amd64)

🔇 Additional comments (1)

.github/renovate.json5 (1)

11-17: LGTM! Configuration correctly implements the automerge schedule restrictions.

The changes properly disable GitHub's platform automerge in favor of Renovate's automerge (line 16), and the cron syntax on line 17 correctly restricts automerging to Monday–Thursday mornings UTC (08:00–11:59). The explanatory comments clearly document the rationale and scope of these restrictions.

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