Interesting, the open PRs are now failing the check-dist check, I believe because the auto-merged PR did not commit the changes perhaps?

Yes, I saw it now too, the auto-merge workflow doesn't commit changes.
Should I add npm run prepare and squash or disable the workflow?

I think running the build and squashing that into the commit sounds like a good idea if thats possible.

It's very hard to test locally with nektos/act... for me npm run prepare doesn't change anything like it does remotely in check-dist 🤷