Generating Changelog

Git Changelog Generation

Automatically analyze git commit history and generate comprehensive changelogs following industry-standard formats.

Auto-Invoke Triggers

This skill automatically activates when:

1. Editing changelog files: CHANGELOG.md, CHANGELOG.txt, HISTORY.md
2. Mentioning keywords: "changelog", "release notes", "version", "semantic versioning"
3. Git tagging operations: Creating or discussing version tags
4. Release preparation: Discussing release preparation or deployment

What This Skill Delivers

When invoked, this skill provides:

1. Git History Analysis Report

• Commit range analysis (since last tag or specified range)
• Commit categorization by type (feat, fix, docs, etc.)
• Semantic version bump recommendation (MAJOR, MINOR, PATCH)
• Breaking changes detection
• Author and PR number extraction

2. Formatted Changelog

Choose from multiple formats:

• Keep a Changelog (default) - Industry standard, human-friendly
• Conventional - Follows Conventional Commits specification
• GitHub - GitHub-style release notes with PR links

3. Update Strategy

• Append to existing CHANGELOG.md (preserves history)
• Overwrite with fresh changelog
• Create new version section
• Merge with existing sections

Common Use Cases

Project Types

• Microservices: Track changes across multiple services
• Frontend Applications: UI updates and features
• API Development: REST API versioning and breaking changes
• Infrastructure: Deployment, CI/CD, DevOps updates
• Documentation: Technical docs, API docs, guides

Conventional Commit Examples

The skill recognizes standard commit conventions:

feat: add new authentication endpoint
fix: resolve token expiration issue
docs: update API documentation
refactor: optimize database queries
perf: improve calculation performance
test: add integration tests
build: upgrade framework version
ci: configure automated testing
chore: update dependencies

Monorepo Support

The skill handles monorepo structures:

• Service-specific changelogs (e.g., services/api/CHANGELOG.md)
• Frontend changelog (frontend/CHANGELOG.md)
• Root changelog (project-wide changes)

Technical Features

Conventional Commits Support

Automatically categorizes commits by type:

• feat: → Features section
• fix: → Bug Fixes section
• docs: → Documentation section
• style: → Code Style section
• refactor: → Refactoring section
• perf: → Performance section
• test: → Testing section
• build: → Build System section
• ci: → CI/CD section
• chore: → Other Changes section

Semantic Versioning Detection

Automatically suggests version bumps:

• MAJOR (x.0.0): Contains BREAKING CHANGE: or exclamation mark suffix
• MINOR (0.x.0): Contains feat: commits
• PATCH (0.0.x): Contains only fix: commits

Breaking Changes Detection

Identifies breaking changes from:

• BREAKING CHANGE: footer in commit message
• Exclamation mark after commit type (example: feat!: or fix!:)
• Manual annotation in commit body

GitHub Integration

Extracts from commit messages:

• Pull request numbers (#123)
• Issue references (#456)
• Author information
• Commit SHAs

Output Example

# Changelog

All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.

The format is based on [Keep a Changelog](https://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/),
and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0.html).

## [1.2.0] - 2025-10-22

### Added
- Keyword competition scoring algorithm for market analysis (#123)
- Multi-currency support for revenue calculations (#124)
- OpenSearch faceted search with Valkey caching (#125)

### Fixed
- JWT token expiration issue in user-service (#126)
- Race condition in favorite-service list operations (#127)
- Memory leak in trend-service ARIMA calculations (#128)

### Changed
- Upgraded Spring Boot to 3.4.3 across all services (#129)
- Optimized search-service query performance (40% improvement) (#130)
- Refactored supply-analytics-service ETL pipeline (#131)

### Security
- Updated Jackson to fix CVE-2025-12345 (#132)

### Performance
- Reduced trend-service calculation time from 2.5s to 0.8s (#133)

## [1.1.0] - 2025-09-15

...

Progressive Disclosure

This is Level 1 documentation (skill overview).

For more details, see:

• Level 2: WORKFLOW.md - Step-by-step methodology
• Level 3: EXAMPLES.md - Real-world usage examples
• Level 4: TROUBLESHOOTING.md - Common issues and solutions

Usage

Via Command

/changelog
/changelog --since v1.1.0 --version 1.2.0
/changelog --format github --append

Auto-Invoke

The skill activates automatically when:

# Editing changelog
vim CHANGELOG.md

# Discussing releases
"I need to prepare release notes for version 1.2.0"

# Git tagging
"Let's create a changelog for the v1.2.0 tag"

Integration with Development Workflow

Pre-Release Workflow

1. Developer: git tag v1.2.0-rc1
2. Skill auto-invokes: Analyzes commits since v1.1.0
3. Skill generates: Draft changelog with categorized changes
4. Developer reviews: Edits descriptions, adds context
5. Developer: /changelog --append --version 1.2.0
6. Skill updates: CHANGELOG.md with final content
7. Developer commits: Changelog as part of release

Service-Specific Releases

# Generate changelog for specific service
cd services/api
/changelog --output CHANGELOG.md --since v1.0.0

Monorepo Root Changelog

# Generate project-wide changelog
/changelog --output CHANGELOG.md --format keepachangelog

Quality Standards

• Conventional Commits: 100% recognition of conventional commit format
• Semantic Versioning: Automatic MAJOR/MINOR/PATCH detection
• Breaking Changes: Clear highlighting of breaking changes
• PR Linking: Automatic GitHub PR number extraction
• Date Formatting: ISO 8601 dates (YYYY-MM-DD)
• Markdown Formatting: Valid markdown with proper headers
• No Claude Code Footer: Never include Claude Code attribution in changelog entries unless explicitly requested by user

See Also

• doc-coauthoring skill - Collaborative documentation workflow
• /code-explain - Explain complex code sections
• diagramming skill or /diagram command - Generate diagrams (e.g., release flow diagrams)

Version

1.0.0