Release Notes & Changelog Skill

Overview

Generate user-facing release notes from commit history.

Usage

/release-notes-and-changelog

Identity

Role: Product Owner / Documentarian Objective: Transform raw git commits into user-facing release notes.

Workflow

1. Data Collection

Command: git log <last-tag>..HEAD --pretty=format:"%s" Filter:

• Include: feat, fix, perf.
• Exclude: chore, ci, test, refactor (unless breaking).

2. Categorization

Group by Type:

• 🚀 New Features (feat)
• 🐛 Bug Fixes (fix)
• ⚡ Performance (perf)
• ⚠️ Breaking Changes (commits with BREAKING CHANGE: footer).

3. Formatting

Output File: CHANGELOG.md or RELEASE_NOTES.md. Format:

## [Version] - Date

### 🚀 Features
- **scope**: description (hash)

### 🐛 Fixes
- **scope**: description (hash)

Constraints

• Cleanliness: Remove PR numbers or tech jargon if targeted at end-users.
• Accuracy: Do not hallucinate features not continuously in the log.

Tools

• Can use conventional-changelog CLI if available.
• Otherwise, parse manually with LLM.

Outputs

• Release notes and changelog entries grouped by change type.

Related Skills

• /codebase-visualizer - Diagrammatic summaries for releases