As part of DPTP-4435 - afri@afri.cz has found that the current process branch process is fundamentally different from what is needed for periodics variant branching. Additionally jupierce had discuss changing the branching workflow to include more AI / Claude automation.

An initial step in that direction is to create a Release plugin that understands periodic variant configuration and how to migrate definitions from main/master as well as previous releases to the designated release.

Resulting release prs

With agreement we could add a step to our branching process to use the plugin to migrate existing dev periodic variant definitions to the next release.  Some guidelines on how we handle config outside of openshift repo may still be needed (do we handle them automatically or not?)