diff --git a/.bumpversion.cfg b/.bumpversion.cfg
index 8b386bda..4ea72a85 100644
--- a/.bumpversion.cfg
+++ b/.bumpversion.cfg
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 [bumpversion]
-current_version = 0.1.7
+current_version = 0.1.8
 tag = True
 commit = True
 
diff --git a/.github/workflows/publish.yml b/.github/workflows/publish.yml
index 2b44620c..f29a1dc1 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/publish.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/publish.yml
@@ -12,32 +12,15 @@ jobs:
     environment: release
     permissions:
       id-token: write
-      contents: write # Add this permission to allow pushing the version bump
     steps:
       - name: Checkout code
         uses: actions/checkout@v2
-        with:
-          fetch-depth: 0 # Fetch all history for all branches and tags
 
       - name: Setup PDM
         uses: pdm-project/setup-pdm@v2
         with:
           python-version: "3.10"
 
-      - name: Install bumpversion
-        run: pip install bumpversion
-
-      - name: Configure Git
-        run: |
-          git config user.name github-actions
-          git config user.email github-actions@github.com
-
-      - name: Apply bumpversion minor
-        run: |
-          bumpversion minor
-          git push
-          git push --tags
-
       - name: Build package
         run: pdm build
 
diff --git a/cyto_dl/__init__.py b/cyto_dl/__init__.py
index 9993d06b..4ae4758a 100644
--- a/cyto_dl/__init__.py
+++ b/cyto_dl/__init__.py
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-__version__ = "0.1.7"
+__version__ = "0.1.8"
 
 
 # silence bio packages warnings
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 8e403b92..a0d9b4d0 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ build-backend = "pdm.pep517.api"
 
 [project]
 name = "cyto-dl"
-version = "0.1.7"
+version = "0.1.8"
 description = """\
   Collection of representation learning models, techniques, callbacks, utils, \
   used to create latent variable models of cell shape, morphology and \