ci: remove redundant workflows uncovered by post-refactor survey

[jonathanhhb]

Summary

Post-refactor cleanup. Two workflows became redundant once the RAG/CI reorganization landed (#241, #246). Deleting them: 6 workflows → 5, and eliminates two spots where CI was doing the same work twice.

Changes

1. Delete .github/workflows/mkdocs-pr.yml

Duplicated github-actions.yml's docs tox matrix entry — both ran mkdocs build on every PR. Only unique bit was uploading the built site as a 14-day preview artifact, but the canonical render location is laser.idmod.org/laser-generic/tutorials/ (updated on every main-push per #246), so the per-PR preview artifact is marginal.

2. Remove docs-deploy job from release-publish.yml

Before we had the Execute Notebooks + artifact overlay pattern, releases had a bespoke docs deploy that did in-band notebook execution (MKDOCS_EXECUTE_NOTEBOOKS=true) followed by mkdocs gh-deploy. That's now fully covered by mkdocs-ghp.yml, which fires when the release commit hits main and deploys with the fresh executed_nbs artifact.

Effect on a typical release:

• Before: merge release-prep to main → mkdocs-ghp deploys (fresh artifact) → dispatch release-publish → release-publish's docs-deploy re-deploys with in-band execution (~30 min slower, same output)
• After: merge release-prep to main → mkdocs-ghp deploys (fresh artifact) → dispatch release-publish → wheels + PyPI + GH release only

Also fixed needs: [build, docs-deploy] in the release and publish jobs down to needs: [build]. Those jobs shouldn't gate on a docs deploy; the docs deploy is a main-branch concern, not a release-artifact concern.

Left an inline comment in the workflow explaining where the docs deploy happens now so future maintainers don't reintroduce it.

What stays

Four workflows remain, each with a distinct role:

Workflow	Role
github-actions.yml	pytest matrix + docs matrix entry (validates mkdocs build) + ruff / typing
execute-notebooks.yml	Produces the canonical executed_nbs artifact
build-combined-doc.yml	Consumes artifact → produces the RAG corpus in laser-mcp
mkdocs-ghp.yml	Consumes artifact → deploys the docs site to GitHub Pages
release-publish.yml	Wheels + PyPI + GH Release (with the docs-deploy job removed)

Test plan

• YAML validity confirmed
• Next release should still produce wheels + PyPI + GH release correctly; verified by inspection since the workflow structure only removed a job and dropped it from needs:
• Next release should still update the docs site — but via mkdocs-ghp on the release-commit push, which we already know works (last verified after ci(docs-site): overlay executed_nbs artifact before mkdocs build #246)

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Removes redundant CI workflows/jobs after the docs/RAG CI refactor, so the release workflow focuses only on release artifacts while docs deployment remains handled by the dedicated MkDocs deploy pipeline.

Changes:

• Deletes the PR-only MkDocs build workflow (mkdocs-pr.yml) that duplicated existing docs validation.
• Removes the docs-deploy job from release-publish.yml and updates downstream needs: to depend only on build.
• Adds an inline note in release-publish.yml documenting where docs deployment happens now.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated no comments.

File	Description
.github/workflows/release-publish.yml	Drops redundant docs deployment from the release workflow and unblocks release/publish from depending on it.
.github/workflows/mkdocs-pr.yml	Deletes a redundant PR docs-build workflow that overlapped with the main CI docs validation path.

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[JSchripsema-IDM]

Generally looks good, though I think it would be good to retain the artifact upload bit so the output can be viewed (it's not uncommon for the build to be green but for text to be rendered differently than is desired).