Dynamo Release Notes

Dynamo Release Notes

When to use

• Turning a raw ReleaseNotes_{X.Y.Z}.md generator dump (or an equivalent PR list) into a publishable wiki section for a Dynamo release — major, minor, or patch.
• Deciding whether a specific PR belongs in a release's notes, or which section (Features / Enhancements / Bug Fixes / Security Fixes) it belongs in.
• Inserting or correcting content on the live DynamoDS/Dynamo wiki's Release-Notes page.

When not to use

• Writing or polishing release-notes prose in isolation, with the PR list already decided and no publishing step involved — see the style guide directly.
• Any other content type (node descriptions, UI strings, blog posts, tutorials) — those stay with dynamo-content-designer.

Inputs expected

• The target version number (e.g. 4.2.0).
• The raw source: ReleaseNotes_{X.Y.Z}.md (produced by PushRelease's GENERATE_RELEASE_NOTES=on stage running scripts/generate-release-notes.ps1), or an equivalent raw PR list for the version if that artifact wasn't generated.
• Whether this is a major/minor or patch release (changes which prior-release baseline applies to the bug-inclusion rule below).
• Access to the public DynamoDS/Dynamo wiki repo, and — for internal ticket/PR cross-refs (e.g. DYN tickets whose PRs live on git.autodesk.com) — access to that GHE instance.

Output format

The finalized ### {version} wiki section, live on https://github.com/DynamoDS/Dynamo/wiki/Release-Notes, verified post-push against a fresh fetch of the page.

Workflow

1. Orient before starting. This skill may be run by someone other than its author — don't assume the caller already knows the process. Summarize the steps below, then ask two things: (a) proceed with the process as written, or adjust it first; (b) confirm the version number, the raw source file, and the release type. Treat this as a standing checkpoint on every run, not a one-time question.
2. Curate the raw dump. Apply the rules in curation-rules.md: collapse revert/reapply churn on the same ticket to its net behavior change, drop internal/build/test/version-bump-only entries, and apply the shipped-baseline bug rule (a bug fix belongs in the notes only if the underlying bug existed in an already-shipped release — bugs introduced and fixed entirely within the current dev cycle are excluded regardless of beta exposure).
3. Run the sweeps — security-fix identification, breaking-changes, external-contributor credit, and category QA. These are independent of each other and of step 2's line-by-line curation, so fan them out in parallel (subagents) rather than running serially. Details and the contractor-vs-community-contributor distinction are in curation-rules.md.
4. Flag, don't guess. Any inclusion, exclusion, or categorization call that isn't clear-cut from the raw PR text goes into an explicit "needs a call" list for the requester to decide. Never silently resolve ambiguity — this mirrors dynamo-content-designer's "never hallucinate, always ask" rule, applied to editorial judgment calls instead of prose.
5. Draft the prose per dynamo-content-designer's writing principles and the style guide — past-tense verb, neutral tone, no internal jargon, one sentence per bullet where possible. Format: ### {version} heading, then #### Features / #### Enhancements / #### Bug Fixes / #### Security Fixes (only sections with content), each item as > * <sentence>. [PR](url).
6. Cross-check against everything already published — not just the immediately preceding version. Diff every candidate PR number against the entire existing Release-Notes.md content, all prior version sections. The raw generator only knows whether a PR was cherry-picked into this release's RC branch; it has no concept of "this PR's fix already shipped under an earlier patch release that also branched from master in the same window." Drop exact matches. This step exists because it caught 5 duplicate PRs in the 4.2.0 pass that the generator's own tags completely missed — see curation-rules.md and DynaNotes DynamoRelease/improvement-plan.md item C19.
7. Validate links and content. For every cited PR: confirm the link resolves, and confirm the bullet text matches the PR's own ### Release Notes body field — not just its title. Titles are sometimes misleadingly narrow (e.g. a title mentioning one template when the PR's actual described scope covers four).
8. Insert into the live wiki. Follow wiki-publish-plumbing.md exactly. The wiki repo contains a Windows-invalid filename that breaks any git operation touching the full index or working tree — normal clone/checkout/add/reset will fail or, worse, silently stage the entire wiki as deleted. The plumbing recipe never touches the index or working tree, so the real safety check is the diff-tree comparison in step 5 above — confirm it reports exactly one changed entry before proceeding to commit-tree. Ask the requester to explicitly confirm before pushing — a wiki push has no PR or review gate and is immediately live and public.
9. Verify post-push. Re-fetch the raw page and diff it against the pre-push version; confirm only the intended lines changed anywhere on the page.
10. Retro. Ask the requester whether anything about this run should change the skill itself — a new gotcha, a rule that needs adjusting, a step that was unclear or missing. If yes, update this skill and its assets now, while the detail is fresh, rather than deferring it to "someday."

Boundaries

• ✅ Always: run the full curate → sweep → flag → cross-check → validate pipeline before drafting is considered final; confirm the diff-tree check shows exactly one changed entry before any commit-equivalent step in a wiki clone; re-verify the page after every push.
• ⚠️ Ask first: any PR whose inclusion/exclusion/category isn't clear-cut (flag, don't guess); crediting or omitting an external contributor when authorship is ambiguous; pushing the finalized section to the live wiki.
• 🚫 Never: run whole-index git operations (git add -A, git reset, git checkout ., a normal git clone) against a local clone of the Dynamo.wiki repo — see wiki-publish-plumbing.md for why and what to use instead. Never skip the step 6 duplicate-publication cross-check. Never skip the pre-push confirmation.

Assets & References

• curation-rules.md — dedup/inclusion rules, the four sweeps, and the C19 duplicate-publication cross-check in detail.
• style-guide.md — sentence-level style rules and good examples for release-note bullets (moved here from dynamo-content-designer, which now redirects release-notes requests to this skill).
• wiki-publish-plumbing.md — the exact git plumbing recipe for safely editing the Dynamo.wiki repo on Windows.