Changelog

Changelog Generator

Generate a well-structured changelog from git history.

Workflow

1. Detect the repository root via git rev-parse --show-toplevel.
2. Determine the range:
   • If the user specifies two refs (tags, branches, SHAs), use that range.
   • Otherwise, find the latest tag with git describe --tags --abbrev=0 and use <latest-tag>..HEAD.
   • If no tags exist, use the full history.
3. Collect commits with git log --pretty=format:"%H|%s|%an|%ad" --date=short <range>.
4. Categorize each commit by its conventional-commit prefix or keywords:
   • Added — feat, add
   • Fixed — fix, bugfix, patch
   • Changed — refactor, update, change
   • Deprecated — deprecate
   • Removed — remove, delete
   • Security — security, vuln
   • Performance — perf
   • Documentation — docs
   • Other — anything that doesn't match
5. Format output following Keep a Changelog conventions.
6. If a CHANGELOG.md already exists, prepend the new section below the title. Otherwise create a new file.

Output Format

# Changelog

## [<version-or-range>] - YYYY-MM-DD

### Added
- Description of feature (SHA short)

### Fixed
- Description of fix (SHA short)

...

Guidelines

• Use imperative mood in descriptions ("Add feature" not "Added feature").
• Include short SHA (7 chars) for traceability.
• Group by category, then sort chronologically within each group.
• Omit empty categories.
• If the user requests a specific format (e.g., plain text, JSON), adapt accordingly.
• For monorepos, offer to scope by directory path using git log -- <path>.