generate-release-notes

generate-release-notes is a skill for Claude Code from donnfelker/donnfelker-plugin-marketplace. It costs 80 tokens per session (1,102 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A tool that turns Git commit history into release notes or a changelog. Git is the system commonly used to record code changes, and conventional commits use labels such as feat or fix.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to prepare release notes, update a changelog, or summarize changes since the latest version or a chosen commit.
Why use it?
It organizes scattered commit messages into a readable summary of what changed between releases.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} variable. Also seen: mentions Claude Code.

Runs only inside its plugin — its command needs a path that Claude Code sets for a plugin’s own hooks and for nothing else. Install the plugin, not this.

Part of the generate-release-notes plugin — 1 skill shipped together

Good fit Use it to prepare release notes, update a changelog, or summarize changes since the latest version or a chosen commit.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.

Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add donnfelker/donnfelker-plugin-marketplace
Claude Code
/plugin install generate-release-notes

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install generate-release-notes, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 1 skill.

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.

agentmods badge for generate-release-notes

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/donnfelker/donnfelker-plugin-marketplace/generate-release-notes/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/donnfelker/donnfelker-plugin-marketplace/generate-release-notes)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/donnfelker/donnfelker-plugin-marketplace/generate-release-notes"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/donnfelker/donnfelker-plugin-marketplace/generate-release-notes/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for generate-release-notes

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/donnfelker/donnfelker-plugin-marketplace/generate-release-notes"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/donnfelker/donnfelker-plugin-marketplace/generate-release-notes.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 80 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,102 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. Third-party audits
  • Socket pass 13 Jun 2026
  • Snyk warn 13 Jun 2026
How audits are shown
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 5.1 $0.00080 $0.01102
Opus 5 $0.00040 $0.00551
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00220
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00110

Measured 11d ago against content hash f3366e212b6c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

generate-release-notes 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 11d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/parse-commits.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.

plugins/generate-release-notes/skills/generate-release-notes/SKILL.md · 114 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 114 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Release Notes Generator

Generate release notes and changelogs by parsing conventional commit messages from git log history. Commits following the Conventional Commits specification (feat:, fix:, docs:, etc.) are categorized, grouped, and formatted into professional markdown output.

Workflow

Step 1: Determine Output Type

Ask the user what they need:

  • Release Notes — a single release summary written to RELEASE_NOTES.md
  • Changelog — append to an existing CHANGELOG.md (or create one)
  • Both — generate both files

Step 2: Determine Commit Range

Identify which commits to include. Two approaches:

Since last tag (default): The parser script automatically detects the latest tag and uses <tag>..HEAD when no range is provided. To confirm the range with the user before generating, run git describe --tags --abbrev=0 to display the latest tag.

Custom range: Accept a user-specified range like v1.0.0..v2.0.0 or v1.0.0..HEAD and pass it as the first argument to the parser script.

If no tags exist, ask the user for a range or default to all commits (the script handles this automatically).

Step 3: Parse Commits

Run the parser script to extract structured commit data. The ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} variable is set automatically by Claude Code when the plugin is installed:

bash ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/generate-release-notes/scripts/parse-commits.sh [<range>]

The script outputs one block per commit with fields: COMMIT, TYPE, SCOPE, BREAKING, DESCRIPTION, BODY, FOOTERS.

Step 4: Categorize and Format

Group parsed commits by type into sections using this mapping:

Type Section Heading
feat Features
fix Bug Fixes
perf Performance Improvements
refactor Code Refactoring
docs Documentation
style Styles
test Tests
build Build System
ci Continuous Integration
chore Chores
revert Reverts

Ordering: List sections in the order shown above. Within each section, list entries alphabetically by scope (ungrouped entries last).

Read the full file on GitHub · 114 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 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.

  1. 11d ago First seen · 114 lines · 80 tokens per session scan A f3366e212b6c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

generate-release-notes is a skill published in the GitHub repository donnfelker/donnfelker-plugin-marketplace (4 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 80 tokens to every session and 1,102 once invoked, about $0.0004 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.