Maven Central Publisher

Help the user publish JVM artifacts (Java, Kotlin, Scala, etc.) to Maven Central through the Sonatype Central Publisher Portal. This skill covers the entire process from initial setup to automated CI/CD releases.

Assess where the user is

Publishing to Maven Central involves several stages. Before diving in, figure out what the user has already done:

1. Namespace: Do they have a verified namespace on central.sonatype.com?
2. GPG: Do they have a GPG key generated and distributed to a key server?
3. Portal token: Do they have a user token from the Central Publisher Portal?
4. Build tool: Are they using Maven or Gradle?
5. POM metadata: Does their POM/build config include all required metadata (name, description, URL, licenses, developers, SCM)?
6. Signing: Is their build configured to sign artifacts with GPG?
7. Publishing plugin: Is the build configured with the appropriate publishing plugin?
8. CI/CD: Do they want automated publishing from CI?

Ask about these early. Many users will come in having done some steps but not others — or they'll have a build that "almost works" but fails validation. Meet them where they are.