What is ess-summarize-change-log?

A formatter that turns long Git commit logs or change descriptions into one to five GitHub-ready Markdown bullets. It uses Conventional Commits, a standard format such as `fix(api): handle timeout`, and preserves existing co-author lines.

Use it to prepare a squash-merge message, summarize a Git log, or turn a pull-request narrative into concise release or merge notes.

It makes a lengthy set of changes easier to scan while keeping each bullet focused on what changed and why. It also enforces short, consistent commit subjects for merge messages and pull requests.

ess-summarize-change-log — Skill by CiscoDevNet/essentials

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.

Any agent

npx skills add CiscoDevNet/essentials --skill ess-summarize-change-log

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/CiscoDevNet/essentials

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ciscodevnet/essentials/ess-summarize-change-log/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/ciscodevnet/essentials/ess-summarize-change-log)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ciscodevnet/essentials/ess-summarize-change-log"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ciscodevnet/essentials/ess-summarize-change-log/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ciscodevnet/essentials/ess-summarize-change-log"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ciscodevnet/essentials/ess-summarize-change-log.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 81 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 862 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00081	$0.00862
Opus 5.5	$0.00032	$0.00345
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00016	$0.00172
Haiku 4.5	$0.00008	$0.00086

Measured 2d ago against content hash 3ae5ac8d5058, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ess-summarize-change-log 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.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 3 executable files (scripts/test_validate_summary.py, scripts/validate_summary.py, scripts/validate-summary.sh), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

skills/ess/ess-summarize-change-log/SKILL.md · 99 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 99 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Summarize Change Log

Turn a long git log, squash message draft, or PR narrative into 1–5 copy-paste markdown bullets for a GitHub merge commit or extended description.

Output format

Return only markdown bullets. No preamble, no section headings unless the user asks.

- **type(scope): subject** — One sentence: what changed and why it matters.

1 to 5 bullets, never more than 5.
Preserve Co-authored-by: footers from the input only if present; place after bullets with a blank line before them.

Subject rules

Follow Conventional Commits 1.0.0:

Format: <type>[optional scope]: <description> — imperative mood, lowercase type.
Types: feat, fix, docs, refactor, perf, test, build, ci, chore.
Entire subject ≤ 50 characters (type, scope, colon, space, description).
Scope matches the primary area (api-client, cli, web).

What changed, not process

Every subject must state what changed. Ban vague/process subjects:

Bad	Good
`address PR #123 review comments`	`fix(cli): defer delete confirm`
`port docs from #120`	`docs(api-client): document --deployment`
`follow up on review`	`fix(web): align listener id messaging`

Consolidation (>5 input commits)

Group by scope + intent; merge overlapping fixes.
Keep distinct areas separate (infra vs CLI vs docs).
If still >5, drop least user-visible items; fold detail into a bullet body.

Validation (required)

Before returning output, run the validator from SKILL_DIR: the absolute path of the directory that contains this SKILL.md. Do not use a repo-relative path; the skill may be installed outside the repo you are working in.

"$SKILL_DIR/scripts/validate-summary.sh" /tmp/draft-summary.md

Or validate the checked-in fixture:

"$SKILL_DIR/scripts/validate-summary.sh" "$SKILL_DIR/examples-good.md"

Or pipe stdin:

Read the full file on GitHub · 99 lines

Files

What ships with it

6 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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.

2d ago First seen · 99 lines · 81 tokens per session scan A 3ae5ac8d5058

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ess-summarize-change-log is a skill published in the GitHub repository CiscoDevNet/essentials (7 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 81 tokens to every session and 862 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-11-04.

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ess-summarize-change-log next to 6 skills from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
ess-summarize-change-logCiscoDevNet/essentials	Skill	7	3d ago	Apache-2.0	A	81	Claude Code, Codex
create-prprisma/orm	Skill	48k	yesterday	Apache-2.0	A	48	Claude Code, Codex
review-implement-phaseprisma/orm	Skill	48k	yesterday	Apache-2.0	A	38	Claude Code
review-triage-phaseprisma/orm	Skill	48k	yesterday	Apache-2.0	A	36	Claude Code
multiline-commit-messagesprisma/orm	Skill	48k	yesterday	Apache-2.0	A	35	Claude Code, Codex
git-opsPrismer-AI/PrismerCloud	Skill	1.4k	15d ago	MIT	A	62	Claude Code
hero-diff-highlightUnclecheng-li/AI_Animation	Skill	1.7k	11d ago	MIT	A	0	Claude Code, Codex