commit-release-notes

Instructions for turning recent Git commits into release notes written for people who may not be developers. Git commits are recorded changes made to a code project.

In plain words
What is it for?
Summarizing recent work, filtering out unimportant internal changes, grouping related commits, and producing plain-language changelogs.
Why use it?
It replaces technical commit messages with a short explanation of what changed for users or teammates.

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/jcottam/agent-resources/commit-release-notes
Any agent
npx skills add jcottam/agent-resources --skill commit-release-notes
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jcottam/agent-resources

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 67 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,093 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 $0.00067 $0.01093
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.00547
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.00219
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00109

Measured 2d ago against content hash b119c02ccc27, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

commit-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 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.

skills/productivity/commit-release-notes/SKILL.md · 120 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 120 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Commit Release Notes

Turn git history into clear summaries for teammates, stakeholders, or changelogs — not developer jargon.

Workflow

1. Gather commits

Run read-only git commands. Do not commit, push, or edit files unless the user explicitly asks.

User intent Command
Recent work (default) git log --oneline -10
By author git log --author=<name> --oneline -15
Since a tag or commit git log <ref>..HEAD --oneline
Detail per commit git log --stat --format='%h %s%n%b' <range>

Defaults when unspecified:

  • Branch: current branch
  • Count: 5–15 commits, enough to cover the work without noise
  • Skip empty merge commits unless they carry meaningful context

2. Understand the changes

  • Read commit messages and file stats (--stat) to learn what actually changed.
  • Group related commits into one user-facing idea (e.g. three truncation commits → "prompts load without flicker").
  • Focus on user-visible behavior: what someone using the app will see or feel.
  • Deprioritize internal-only work (refactors, lockfile-only bumps) unless it is the whole story or the user asked for technical detail.

3. Deliver outputs (in order)

Produce only what the user asked for. When they want the full treatment, use this order:

  1. Technical digest (optional) — one short paragraph for engineers; file names and mechanisms OK here.
  2. Plain paragraph — 3–5 sentences at the requested reading level (default: 8th grade).
  3. Bulleted list — same content as the paragraph, one idea per line.

If the user liked the paragraph and asks for bullets next, convert without re-explaining from scratch.

Plain-language writing rules

  • Short sentences. Common words. Active voice.
  • Describe what changed for the user, not which files moved.
  • Prefer: "the page loads smoother", "videos show first", "a duplicate button was removed".
  • Avoid unless requested: refactor, dependency bump, ResizeObserver, hook names, component paths.
  • No hype ("exciting", "powerful", "game-changing"). State facts.
  • Dependency updates: one line like "software packages were updated" unless versions matter to the audience.

Read the full file on GitHub · 120 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 · 120 lines · 67 tokens per session scan A b119c02ccc27

Subscribe to this mod's changes

commit-release-notes is a skill published in the GitHub repository jcottam/agent-resources (30 stars, last pushed 26d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 67 tokens to every session and 1,093 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-08-30.

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