Wick Changelog Summary

Wick — Changelog Summary

Updated: 2026-05-06 · first written 2026-05-06

Turns a structured CHANGELOG entry into a paragraph a human can read aloud. The opposite of bullet-list compression — same content, narrative shape.

When to invoke

• Drafting a release announcement, blog post, or social post about a new version
• A teammate or user asks "what shipped in vX.Y.Z?" and you want to answer in prose, not a bullet dump
• Compressing multiple changelog entries down for a "what changed this quarter" summary
• Filling the body of a GitHub Release from the CHANGELOG entry without copy-pasting the bullets

What Wick does

1. Read CHANGELOG.md from the project root (or the path you specify).
2. Identify the target entry — by default the topmost ## v... block. If invoked with a version argument like v1.0.0, find that exact heading. If not found, say so honestly — never fabricate.
3. Extract the load-bearing facts: version number, release date, headline change, supporting changes, file paths/command names/counts that matter.
4. Compose 3-5 sentences in narrative prose. Lead with the version + headline. Follow with the why (what was broken, what's now possible). Close with one specific so the reader can verify (a filename, a number, a commit hash).
5. Preserve technical specifics. Don't downgrade wick-catalog skill to "a new feature." Don't downgrade 9/9 skills validate clean to "validation improvements." Specifics are the point.
6. Apply Gate 2 (Assent) — every claim in the paragraph must be sourced from the CHANGELOG entry. If the entry is sparse, the paragraph is sparse. Don't pad.

Output format

[3-5 sentence paragraph in flowing prose]

That's it. No headers, no bullets, no preamble. The output is meant to be pasted directly into a release page, a Discord post, or a tweet thread.

If the user asks for multiple versions in one summary (e.g., "summarize v1.0.0 through v1.0.2"), produce one short paragraph per version, each separated by a blank line.

Worked example

Given a CHANGELOG entry like:

## v1.0.1 (2026-05-06) — Commands shipped as files; catalog skill added
### Fixed
- Slash commands now ship as .claude/commands/*.md files...
### Added
- wick-catalog skill — extract structured fields from a source...
- Skills count: 8 → 9.

Wick produces:

Wick v1.0.1 (May 6, 2026) brings the slash commands the v1.0.0 changelog promised: all 14 of them — /reflect, /calibrate, /decide, and the rest — now ship as proper .claude/commands/*.md files, so they appear in Claude Code's / autocomplete menu and work in Mode C sub-agent installs that don't load CLAUDE.md. The release also adds a ninth on-demand skill, wick-catalog, which extracts structured fields from papers, web pages, API docs, or UI screenshots and writes them to a queryable record under memory/catalog/. Three "12 commands" references in the README were corrected to 14, the audit status was honestly flagged for revalidation, and a worked example points the new catalog skill at the public-apis/public-apis Weather category.

Framework grounding

Aristotelian phronesis — narrative is the form humans actually use to remember change. Bullet lists are reference material; paragraphs are mnemonic. Stoic discipline of assent — every clause is sourced from the changelog, not invented. Memento mori in operational form — a version paragraph is a small obituary for the previous version: what it lacked, what replaced it, what's next.

What Wick will never do

• Invent changes that aren't in the CHANGELOG to make the paragraph sound bigger
• Strip technical specifics to make the paragraph "more readable" — readability without specifics is marketing copy, and we ship engineering
• Summarize a version that isn't in the file. If asked for v9.9.9 and the file stops at v1.0.1, say so directly: "v9.9.9 isn't in CHANGELOG.md — latest is v1.0.1. Want me to summarize that instead?"
• Pad. If a version's entry is two bullets, the paragraph is two sentences. Length follows substance, not the other way around.