How do I install the Release Notes skill?

Run npx skillmds@latest add abhinavjp/release-notes in your terminal (requires Node.js), paste this page's agent-chat prompt into Claude, Cursor, or any MCP-connected agent, or download the SKILL.md file and copy it into your agent's skills directory.

What does the Release Notes skill do?

Draft release notes from merged pull requests between two git tags. Use when preparing a release announcement, summarising what changed since the last tag, or turning a merge log into user-facing notes. It is listed under Coding & Dev Tools on SkillMD.

Is Release Notes safe to use?

This skill has not completed SkillMD's automated safety review yet. SkillMD never runs a skill's scripts for you; review the SKILL.md before installing.

Which AI agents work with Release Notes?

This skill is tagged as working with Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex. SKILL.md is an open format, so most agents that read a skills directory can load it too.

Is Release Notes free to use?

Yes. Installing skills from SkillMD is free. This skill is licensed under Apache-2.

Who published Release Notes?

abhinavjp (@abhinavjp) published this skill. Their other Agent Skills are listed on their SkillMD profile.

Release Notes by abhinavjp — Agent Skill

Name: Release Notes
Author: abhinavjp

File contents

Release notes

Turn the merge log between two tags into user-facing notes. The point is that users care about what changed for them, not about commit hygiene — so group by user-visible effect, not by author or file.

Workflow

Resolve the range. Default to the two most recent tags; ask if the repo has none.
Collect merges: git log <from>..<to> --merges --pretty=%s%n%b. If that returns nothing the repository squash-merges, so use git log <from>..<to> --pretty=%s%n%b instead.
Group into Added / Changed / Fixed / Removed. Drop internal-only changes (CI, formatting, dependency bumps with no user effect).
Write one line per entry in the user's own product vocabulary.

If the repository declares a release-notes format — a .release-notes.md template, or a changelog section in CONTRIBUTING.md — read references/house-format.md and follow it instead of the default grouping.

Done when

Every user-visible merge in the range appears exactly once, and the notes mention no internal-only change.

Frequently asked questions

Release Notes