diff --git a/tests/claude_code/_publisher_unit_tests/__init__.py b/tests/claude_code/_publisher_unit_tests/__init__.py
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..e69de29bb2d
diff --git a/tests/claude_code/_publisher_unit_tests/test_run_daily_release_pagination.py b/tests/claude_code/_publisher_unit_tests/test_run_daily_release_pagination.py
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..473e30bea1a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/claude_code/_publisher_unit_tests/test_run_daily_release_pagination.py
@@ -0,0 +1,274 @@
+"""Regression tests for the GitHub release pagination in `run_daily.sh`.
+
+The cron job resolves "newest LiteLLM v*-stable" via the GitHub Releases
+API. A previous version of the loop broke as soon as the current page
+contained ANY v*-stable tag. The Releases endpoint orders by
+`created_at`, NOT by semver, so a backport on an older series cut today
+(e.g. v1.80.1-stable) can land on an earlier page than a higher-version
+release cut two weeks ago (e.g. v1.83.0-stable). The early-break would
+silently pin the cron to a stale tag because the higher-version release
+on a later page never made it into the merged set the final `sort_by`
+consumed.
+
+These tests pin two things:
+
+  1. The buggy early-break-on-first-stable pattern must not return.
+  2. The loop still terminates early on the standard "empty page" guard
+     so a quiet release feed doesn't burn API quota.
+
+The shell loop itself is exercised end-to-end with a fake `curl` that
+serves canned page JSON, demonstrating that the resolved tag is the
+highest-semver stable across all pages even when the highest tag lives
+on page 2+.
+"""
+
+from __future__ import annotations
+
+import os
+import shutil
+import subprocess
+import textwrap
+from pathlib import Path
+
+import pytest
+
+REPO_ROOT = Path(__file__).resolve().parents[3]
+RUN_DAILY = REPO_ROOT / "tests" / "claude_code" / "cron_vm" / "run_daily.sh"
+
+
+def test_run_daily_does_not_early_break_on_first_stable_page() -> None:
+    """The regex pattern `select(test("...stable$"))] | length > 0` followed
+    by `break` is exactly the buggy early-stop. If it ever returns the
+    cron will silently start testing against a stale stable tag.
+    """
+    body = RUN_DAILY.read_text()
+    assert (
+        "length > 0" not in body
+        or "break" not in body
+        or (
+            # If both substrings exist, make sure they aren't both inside the
+            # same release-pagination loop. The current loop only contains
+            # a `break` for the empty-page guard, not for any "length > 0"
+            # condition.
+            not _shares_loop_body(body, "length > 0", "break")
+        )
+    ), (
+        "run_daily.sh contains the old early-break-on-stable pattern. The "
+        "Releases endpoint orders by created_at, not semver, so breaking "
+        "on first-stable-seen can miss higher-versioned releases sitting "
+        "on later pages."
+    )
+
+
+def _shares_loop_body(body: str, needle_a: str, needle_b: str) -> bool:
+    """Heuristic: do both needles live inside a `for page in ...; do ... done`
+    block? Used as a defensive guard for the static check above."""
+    in_loop = False
+    saw_a = False
+    saw_b = False
+    for line in body.splitlines():
+        stripped = line.strip()
+        if stripped.startswith("for page in"):
+            in_loop = True
+            saw_a = False
+            saw_b = False
+            continue
+        if in_loop and stripped == "done":
+            if saw_a and saw_b:
+                return True
+            in_loop = False
+            continue
+        if in_loop:
+            if needle_a in line:
+                saw_a = True
+            if needle_b in line:
+                saw_b = True
+    return False
+
+
+def test_run_daily_keeps_empty_page_break_guard() -> None:
+    """The empty-page break is the only break that should remain in the
+    pagination loop — without it a quiet release feed wastes API quota
+    walking past the last real page."""
+    body = RUN_DAILY.read_text()
+    assert "jq 'length' \"${PAGE_JSON}\"" in body, (
+        "run_daily.sh must still detect empty pages via `jq 'length' "
+        "${PAGE_JSON}`; without this the loop walks the full 5-page cap "
+        "even when there are no more releases."
+    )
+    assert (
+        '== "0"' in body
+    ), 'The empty-page guard must compare jq\'s length output to "0".'
+
+
+def _make_fake_curl(scratch: Path, pages: dict[int, str]) -> Path:
+    """Build a fake `curl` shim that serves the canned page JSON for
+    each `page=N` request and an empty array for any page past the
+    last canned one.
+
+    The shim mimics just enough of curl's CLI surface for the cron
+    script: it accepts the headers + URL we pass, ignores everything
+    we don't need, and writes the canned body to either stdout or the
+    --output target if one is given.
+    """
+    pages_dir = scratch / "pages"
+    pages_dir.mkdir()
+    for page_num, body in pages.items():
+        (pages_dir / f"page{page_num}.json").write_text(body)
+
+    curl_path = scratch / "curl"
+    curl_path.write_text(
+        textwrap.dedent(
+            f"""\
+            #!/usr/bin/env bash
+            # Fake curl for run_daily.sh release pagination tests. Serves
+            # page JSON from {pages_dir} keyed by the `page=` query value,
+            # and returns "[]" for pages past the last canned one (which
+            # is exactly how the real GitHub API behaves past the end).
+            url=""
+            output=""
+            while [[ $# -gt 0 ]]; do
+              case "$1" in
+                -fsS|-fsSL|-H|-o|--output)
+                  if [[ "$1" == "-o" || "$1" == "--output" ]]; then
+                    output="$2"; shift 2
+                  elif [[ "$1" == "-H" ]]; then
+                    shift 2
+                  else
+                    shift
+                  fi
+                  ;;
+                http*)
+                  url="$1"; shift
+                  ;;
+                *)
+                  shift
+                  ;;
+              esac
+            done
+            page="$(printf '%s' "$url" | sed -n 's/.*[?&]page=\\([0-9]*\\).*/\\1/p')"
+            [[ -z "$page" ]] && page=1
+            file="{pages_dir}/page${{page}}.json"
+            if [[ -f "$file" ]]; then
+              if [[ -n "$output" ]]; then cp "$file" "$output"; else cat "$file"; fi
+            else
+              if [[ -n "$output" ]]; then printf '[]' > "$output"; else printf '[]'; fi
+            fi
+            """
+        )
+    )
+    curl_path.chmod(0o755)
+    return curl_path
+
+
+def _extract_resolution_snippet() -> str:
+    """Pull the pagination + sort_by + assignment block out of run_daily.sh
+    so the test exercises the actual production code path (not a copy).
+
+    The block is everything from the GH_AUTH_HEADER setup down through
+    the LITELLM_VERSION emission.
+    """
+    body = RUN_DAILY.read_text()
+    start = body.index("GH_AUTH_HEADER=()")
+    end = body.index('log "resolved litellm:')
+    return body[start:end]
+
+
+@pytest.mark.skipif(shutil.which("jq") is None, reason="jq not available")
+def test_run_daily_resolves_highest_semver_across_pages(tmp_path: Path) -> None:
+    """End-to-end: drive the actual run_daily.sh pagination loop with a
+    fake curl whose page 1 contains a freshly-cut LOW-version backport
+    (v1.80.1-stable) and page 2 contains a two-weeks-old HIGH-version
+    release (v1.83.0-stable). The correct behavior is to resolve
+    v1.83.0-stable. The pre-fix behavior would resolve v1.80.1-stable
+    because the early-break consumed only page 1.
+    """
+    pages = {
+        # Page 1: most-recently-created releases. The order here matches
+        # what /releases?page=1 returns: created-at descending. The
+        # freshly-cut v1.80.1-stable backport sits at the top, plus a
+        # bunch of non-stable releases.
+        1: """[
+            {"tag_name": "v1.84.0-nightly.1"},
+            {"tag_name": "v1.80.1-stable"},
+            {"tag_name": "v1.84.0-nightly.0"}
+        ]""",
+        # Page 2: older releases. The HIGHER-version stable lives here
+        # because it was cut two weeks ago, before the v1.80.1 backport.
+        2: """[
+            {"tag_name": "v1.83.0-rc.5"},
+            {"tag_name": "v1.83.0-stable"},
+            {"tag_name": "v1.82.4-stable"}
+        ]""",
+        # Page 3+: empty -> the loop's empty-page guard fires here.
+    }
+    fake_curl_dir = tmp_path / "shim"
+    fake_curl_dir.mkdir()
+    _make_fake_curl(fake_curl_dir, pages)
+
+    workdir = tmp_path / "work"
+    workdir.mkdir()
+
+    snippet = _extract_resolution_snippet()
+    script = (
+        "set -Eeuo pipefail\n"
+        f"WORKDIR={workdir!s}\n" + snippet + 'printf "%s" "${LITELLM_VERSION}"\n'
+    )
+
+    env = {
+        **os.environ,
+        "PATH": f"{fake_curl_dir}:{os.environ.get('PATH', '')}",
+    }
+    # Make sure the loop hits the fake curl, not the system one.
+    env.pop("GITHUB_TOKEN", None)
+    result = subprocess.run(
+        ["bash", "-c", script],
+        capture_output=True,
+        text=True,
+        env=env,
+        check=True,
+    )
+    assert result.stdout == "v1.83.0-stable", (
+        f"Expected the highest-semver stable across pages 1-2, got "
+        f"{result.stdout!r}. stderr={result.stderr!r}"
+    )
+
+
+@pytest.mark.skipif(shutil.which("jq") is None, reason="jq not available")
+def test_run_daily_terminates_on_empty_page(tmp_path: Path) -> None:
+    """The empty-page guard must fire so we don't always walk all 5
+    pages. With a single populated page and an empty page 2 we should
+    stop after fetching page 2 (the first empty response)."""
+    pages = {1: '[{"tag_name": "v1.50.0-stable"}]'}
+    fake_curl_dir = tmp_path / "shim"
+    fake_curl_dir.mkdir()
+    _make_fake_curl(fake_curl_dir, pages)
+
+    workdir = tmp_path / "work"
+    workdir.mkdir()
+
+    snippet = _extract_resolution_snippet()
+    script = (
+        "set -Eeuo pipefail\n"
+        f"WORKDIR={workdir!s}\n" + snippet + 'printf "%s" "${LITELLM_VERSION}"\n'
+    )
+
+    env = {
+        **os.environ,
+        "PATH": f"{tmp_path}/shim:{os.environ.get('PATH', '')}",
+    }
+    env.pop("GITHUB_TOKEN", None)
+    result = subprocess.run(
+        ["bash", "-c", script],
+        capture_output=True,
+        text=True,
+        env=env,
+        check=True,
+    )
+    assert result.stdout == "v1.50.0-stable"
+    # Only pages 1 and 2 should have been fetched (2 is empty -> break).
+    assert (workdir / "releases.page2.json").exists()
+    assert not (workdir / "releases.page3.json").exists(), (
+        "Empty-page guard didn't fire — the loop kept walking past the "
+        "first empty response."
+    )
diff --git a/tests/claude_code/cron_vm/run_daily.sh b/tests/claude_code/cron_vm/run_daily.sh
index 37589567c4f..46196e60fe3 100755
--- a/tests/claude_code/cron_vm/run_daily.sh
+++ b/tests/claude_code/cron_vm/run_daily.sh
@@ -115,6 +115,18 @@ fi
 # day, so it's common to need to walk past 30+ entries before hitting
 # the most recent v*-stable. We cap at 5 pages (500 releases) which is
 # conservatively beyond the worst observed gap.
+#
+# We deliberately do NOT short-circuit on the first page that contains a
+# v*-stable tag. The /releases endpoint orders by `created_at`, not by
+# semver, so a backport on an older series (e.g. v1.80.1-stable cut
+# today) can show up on an earlier page than a higher-versioned release
+# (v1.83.0-stable cut two weeks ago). Breaking early on first-stable-seen
+# would silently pin the cron to the stale tag because the
+# higher-versioned release still on a later page would never make it
+# into the merged set the `sort_by` below consumes. The only break we
+# keep is the empty-page guard, which means a quiet period in the
+# release feed doesn't waste API quota — we just always walk far enough
+# to be confident we've seen the highest stable tag.
 GH_AUTH_HEADER=()
 if [[ -n "${GITHUB_TOKEN:-}" ]]; then
   GH_AUTH_HEADER=(-H "Authorization: Bearer ${GITHUB_TOKEN}")
@@ -131,11 +143,6 @@ for page in 1 2 3 4 5; do
     >"${PAGE_JSON}"
   jq -s '.[0] + .[1]' "${RELEASES_JSON}" "${PAGE_JSON}" >"${RELEASES_JSON}.merged"
   mv "${RELEASES_JSON}.merged" "${RELEASES_JSON}"
-  # Stop early once we've seen at least one v*-stable tag — no point
-  # paging further for a daily script that only needs the newest.
-  if jq -e '[.[] | .tag_name // "" | select(test("^v[0-9]+\\.[0-9]+\\.[0-9]+-stable$"))] | length > 0' "${PAGE_JSON}" >/dev/null; then
-    break
-  fi
   # No more pages? GitHub returns an empty array past the last page.
   if [[ "$(jq 'length' "${PAGE_JSON}")" == "0" ]]; then
     break