Changelog Generator Skill

Quick Reference - Parse conventional commits and generate categorized changelog

Mission

Generate changelog from conventional commits with categorization (Features, Bug Fixes, Breaking Changes, Performance, Documentation) and formatted output for release notes.

Core Capabilities

• Conventional Commit Parsing: Extract type, scope, description, breaking changes
• Change Categorization: Group by type (feat, fix, perf, docs, refactor, test, chore)
• Breaking Change Detection: Identify BREAKING CHANGE footer and ! syntax
• Semantic Version Integration: Suggest version bump based on change types
• Multi-Format Output: Markdown, JSON, plain text formats

Quick Start

const { ChangelogGenerator } = require('./scripts/generate-changelog.js');

const generator = new ChangelogGenerator({
  fromTag: 'v2.0.0',
  toTag: 'HEAD',
  format: 'markdown'
});

const changelog = await generator.generate();
console.log(changelog);

Conventional Commit Format

<type>(<scope>): <description>

[optional body]

[optional footer(s)]

Supported Types:

• feat: New feature → Features section
• fix: Bug fix → Bug Fixes section
• perf: Performance improvement → Performance section
• docs: Documentation → Documentation section
• style: Code style (no logic change)
• refactor: Code refactoring
• test: Test additions/updates
• chore: Build/tooling changes

Breaking Changes:

• BREAKING CHANGE: footer → Breaking Changes section
• ! after type/scope → Breaking Changes section

Category Priority

1. Breaking Changes (highest impact)
2. Features (new functionality)
3. Bug Fixes (fixes)
4. Performance (optimizations)
5. Documentation (docs updates)

Example Output

## [2.1.0] - 2025-11-05

### Breaking Changes
- **auth**: Remove deprecated OAuth 1.0 support (c4f3b2a)

### Features
- **api**: Add rate limiting with Redis backend (a1b2c3d)
- **ui**: Implement dark mode toggle (e5f6g7h)

### Bug Fixes
- **database**: Fix connection pool exhaustion (i8j9k0l)
- **auth**: Resolve JWT token expiration edge case (m1n2o3p)

### Performance
- **api**: Optimize query performance with database indexes (q4r5s6t)

Pass/Fail Criteria

Pass: Changelog generated with all changes categorized

• ✅ All conventional commits parsed correctly
• ✅ Changes grouped by category (breaking, features, fixes, etc.)
• ✅ Commit hashes included for traceability
• ✅ Execution time <60 seconds

Fail: Parsing or generation errors

• ❌ Non-conventional commits cannot be parsed
• ❌ Category detection fails
• ❌ Output format invalid
• ❌ Execution time exceeds 60 seconds

Configuration

# skills/changelog-generator/templates/changelog-config.yaml
fromTag: v2.0.0
toTag: HEAD
format: markdown  # or 'json', 'plain'
categories:
  - breaking
  - features
  - fixes
  - performance
  - documentation
excludeTypes:
  - style
  - test
  - chore
includeCommitHash: true

Performance Target

Target: <60 seconds for 1000 commits

• Git log parsing: <20s
• Commit analysis: <20s
• Markdown generation: <20s

Need More Detail?

Load: skills/changelog-generator/REFERENCE.md (~15KB)

• Advanced parsing patterns
• Custom category configuration
• Multi-repository support
• Integration examples