Linear Update

Weekly Update from Git History

Analyzes the past week of commits, PRs, and diffs to produce a structured update suitable for stakeholders, standups, or async status threads.

When to Use

• User says "linear-update" or "/linear-update "

Arguments

The skill accepts an optional project name argument: /linear-update <project-name>

• If provided, use it directly as the project parameter when posting to Linear (skip project selection in Step 4).
• If omitted, map from the current repo name to the Linear project:
  • amadeus → Amadeus | LLM Gateway
  • ai-sdk → AI SDK | Ruby Gem
  • langfuse-rb → Langfuse | Ruby Gem

Workflow

Step 1: Gather Raw Data

Run these commands to collect the past week of activity:

# Commits from the last 7 days (all authors)
git log --since="7 days ago" --pretty=format:"%h %s (%an, %ad)" --date=short

# Stat summary of changes
git diff --stat "$(git log --since='7 days ago' --format='%H' | tail -1)^"..HEAD 2>/dev/null || git diff --stat HEAD~20..HEAD

# Merged PRs (if gh is available)
gh pr list --state merged --search "merged:>=$(date -v-7d +%Y-%m-%d 2>/dev/null || date -d '7 days ago' +%Y-%m-%d)" --limit 30 --json number,title,author,labels,mergedAt 2>/dev/null

# Open PRs (context for "in progress")
gh pr list --state open --json number,title,author,labels,isDraft 2>/dev/null

If the repo has no commits in the past 7 days, skip directly to Step 3 and produce a "no movement" update. Do NOT expand the window to pull in older commits — a quiet week is a valid status.

Step 2: Analyze and Categorize

Group changes using this classification:

For each item, extract:

• What changed (one line, user-facing language where possible)
• Why it matters (impact, not implementation detail)
• Scope — estimate: small / medium / large based on files changed and diff size

Step 3: Produce the Update

Write in a conversational, human tone — like a quick Slack post to your team, not a formal report. No headers with #. Use plain text with light markdown (bold for emphasis, bullets for lists). It should read like a person wrote it, not a template filled it in.

Use this structure as a guide (adapt naturally, don't copy rigidly):

What happened in [repo] this past week ([date range]).

**What shipped**
- [Thing] — [why it matters in one sentence]
- [Thing] — [impact]

**Still in flight**
- [Thing] — [what's left / blockers]

**Housekeeping**
- [Refactors, deps, CI, cleanup — keep it brief]

**Removed**
- [Anything deprecated or deleted, with rationale if evident]

Quick stats: N commits, N PRs merged, +N/-N lines across N files.

**Coming up**
[Infer from open PRs, draft PRs, or recent branch activity. If nothing is inferrable, drop this section.]

Step 4: Post to Linear

After generating the update, post it directly to Linear as a project status update.

1. Identify the project — Use the project name passed as an argument (e.g. /linear-update My Project). If no argument was provided, derive the repo name from the current working directory and map it to the Linear project using the repo→project mapping in Arguments above.

2. Determine health — Always set to onTrack unless the user explicitly specifies otherwise.

3. Post the update — Call mcp__linear-server__save_status_update with:

   • type: "project"
   • project: the project name or ID from step 1
   • body: the markdown update from Step 3
   • health: the health status from step 2

Formatting Rules

• Write like you're talking to a teammate — casual, clear, no corporate filler
• Lead with outcomes, not implementation details
• Use active voice: "Added search filtering" not "Search filtering was added"
• Collapse noisy commits (typo fixes, merge commits, lint) into housekeeping or omit entirely
• If a single feature spans multiple commits/PRs, roll them up into one line item
• Keep the entire update under 30 lines — brevity is the feature
• No markdown headers (#, ##) — this is going into a Linear comment, not a doc

Edge Cases

• Monorepo: If the repo has distinct packages/services, group by area before categorizing
• Solo dev: Drop the Contributors line, simplify to a personal changelog
• No PRs (no GitHub remote or gh unavailable): Build entirely from commit log — that's fine
• Empty week: Say so honestly. "No changes landed this week." is a valid update. Do not backfill with older commits to make the update look fuller — silence is signal

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