writing-changelogs

writing-changelogs is a skill for Claude Code from riekelt/technical-writer. It costs 63 tokens per session (818 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for writing changelog entries and release notes. A changelog records what changed in a software project over time.

In plain words
What is it for?
Writing release notes, documenting meaningful fixes or features, and summarizing what was shipped after development work.
Why use it?
It helps describe shipped work accurately, keep entries in date order, and highlight breaking changes and required migration steps.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the technical-writer plugin — 11 skills, 2 commands, 2 agents shipped together

not rated 15repo 8d ago A scan Socket: passSnyk: passSkillSpector: pass 63 tokens original MIT

Good fit Writing release notes, documenting meaningful fixes or features, and summarizing what was shipped after development work.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/riekelt/technical-writer/writing-changelogs
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 riekelt/technical-writer --skill writing-changelogs
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/riekelt/technical-writer

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install technical-writer, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 11 skills, 2 commands, 2 agents.

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 writing-changelogs

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/riekelt/technical-writer/writing-changelogs.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/riekelt/technical-writer/writing-changelogs)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/riekelt/technical-writer/writing-changelogs"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/riekelt/technical-writer/writing-changelogs.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 63 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 818 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 23 Aug 2026
  • Snyk pass 23 Aug 2026
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 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 $0.00063 $0.00818
Opus 5 $0.00032 $0.00409
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.00164
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00082

Measured 8d ago against content hash f819be8794e1, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

writing-changelogs 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 8d 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.

plugins/technical-writer/skills/writing-changelogs/SKILL.md · 67 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 67 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Writing changelogs

REQUIRED BACKGROUND: the technical-writing skill (hard rules, truth rules, style).

Overview

The changelog is one of the few document types where the change, not the current state, is the subject; migration docs and release notes are the others. It is historical: entries are never rewritten, only appended.

When to invoke, and not

Invoke after shipping a meaningful change (a feature, a fix of real size, a removal), when writing release notes, or when summarizing what shipped. Do NOT invoke for trivial edits (roughly three changed files, or three commits), and never rewrite or delete existing entries.

Rules

  • One entry per shipped change, newest first, ISO dates, grouped by version where versions exist.
  • Standard categories where the file uses them: Added / Changed / Deprecated / Fixed / Removed / Security. A Deprecated entry carries the removal date and the replacement.
  • Breaking changes lead the entry, above the categories, each with the required migration action stated (and the migration guide linked when one exists). A breaking change buried under Added is the entry the reader needed most and found last.
  • User-visible impact over implementation detail.
  • Present tense, active voice, and no jargon the reader would not know.
  • Group related changes, and never duplicate an existing entry.
  • Record removals, not just additions: readers chase dead concepts otherwise.
  • Release notes are the audience-facing cut of the same facts: what changed, who it affects, what to do about it. The changelog speaks to engineers; release notes to users of the system. Both draw on the same sources and must never contradict each other.

Entry shape

Document-type exception: the bold leads required below override the shared ban on bold-lead bullets. The exception covers changelog outcomes and the named known-issue, deferred-item, and omission categories only. Repeated label-value bullets remain banned elsewhere.

Bold lead stating the outcome, then root cause, then the fix, with exact names inline:

Read the full file on GitHub · 67 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. 8d ago First seen · 67 lines · 63 tokens per session scan A f819be8794e1

Subscribe to this mod's changes

writing-changelogs is a skill published in the GitHub repository riekelt/technical-writer (15 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 63 tokens to every session and 818 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.