version-changelog

A guide for writing the version changelog that accompanies a revised Linux kernel patch series. A patch series is a group of related code changes sent for review.

In plain words
What is it for?
Writing the Changes in vN section, adding the link to the previous version, and keeping each change as a short reviewer-facing bullet.
Why use it?
It keeps reviewers focused on what changed since the previous version without confusing the changelog with the commit message stored in Git.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/chucklever/cel-kdev/version-changelog
Any agent
npx skills add chucklever/cel-kdev --skill version-changelog
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/chucklever/cel-kdev

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 207 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,388 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00207 $0.01388
Opus 5 $0.00103 $0.00694
Sonnet 5 $0.00041 $0.00278
Haiku 4.5 $0.00021 $0.00139

Measured 2d ago against content hash b3c24ffa378d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

version-changelog scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

plugin/cel-prose/skills/version-changelog/SKILL.md · 115 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 115 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

version-changelog

A reroll carries a changelog: what changed since the previous posting, newest revision first, as terse bullets. b4 emits it under a Changes in vN: heading, with a Link to v(N-1): bullet beneath.

Patch count decides which message carries the block -- the cover letter for a multi-patch series, the lone patch when there is only one -- but it lands below a --- divider either way, so it stays reviewer-facing and never enters git history. Which message is a series-send/b4 concern rather than this skill's, and the content rules below hold for both.

The kernel documentation calls this the "patch changelog" (submitting-patches.rst), and uses "changelog" alone for the commit message body that git keeps. This skill governs the first; the second belongs to cel-prose:commit-message.

Bullet form

Each bullet is a single line of at most 72 columns. When a bullet runs long, tighten the wording or split it into two bullets -- do not let it wrap onto a second line. A line may exceed 72 columns only for an unbreakable token it must carry, such as a URL or a pathname (the "Link to" line is the usual case).

Every block ends with a Link to v(N-1): bullet pointing at the prior posting, so a reviewer can pull it up and diff against it.

Revisions accumulate, newest first: a v3 posting carries the v3 block above the v2 block, both intact. A reviewer who last read v1 needs the rounds in between.

What earns a bullet

Every delta a reviewer would notice reading the new posting against the old one: a changed patch, an added or dropped patch, a reordering, a renamed identifier in the diff. A reroll that only rebases still earns its bullet: write "Rebase on v6.12-rc1, no functional change" rather than nothing, because a reviewer who sees a new version and no explanation goes looking for the change that is not there.

Ground every bullet in an actual diff of the prior version against the current series, not in memory of what you meant to change. What you remember changing and what the diff shows diverge in exactly the cases a changelog exists to catch: a fix that got rebased away, a rename that landed in only half the patches. Recover the real delta with b4 diff <msgid of v(N-1)>, or git range-diff when both versions are local branches (see cel-kdev:b4), and list what it shows.

Read the full file on GitHub · 115 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 115 lines · 207 tokens per session scan A b3c24ffa378d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

version-changelog is a skill published in the GitHub repository chucklever/cel-kdev (2 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 207 tokens to every session and 1,388 once invoked, about $0.0010 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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