Changelog generator

Skill tmj-90/gaffer/runner/skills/changelog-generator

Self-hosted AI coding factory — sandboxed agents deliver tickets to merged code, gated by a human in a dashboard. Local-first, cost-transparent, human-in-the-loop.

Install

npx -y skills add tmj-90/gaffer --skill changelog-generator

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

One thing to look at

0 stars0 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

What its author says it does

Copied from the file, not written here

Use when producing release notes from Conventional Commits, computing the next semantic version from a commit stream, generating CHANGELOG.md, or automating release notes in CI. Triggers on "generate the changelog", "what version bump do these commits require", "release notes", "CHANGELOG", or "semantic version".

SKILL.md

3.7 KB, 878 tokens by cl100k_base, as published. Nobody here has run it

Generate consistent, auditable release notes

Conventional Commits → semantic bump → Keep a Changelog. Three steps, always in order.

Conventional Commit → Semantic Bump

Commit type	Bump
`feat:`	MINOR
`fix:`, `perf:`	PATCH
`BREAKING CHANGE:` footer or `!` suffix	MAJOR
`refactor:`, `docs:`, `chore:`, `ci:`, `test:`	No version bump

Multiple commits in a release: take the highest-ranking bump. One feat: in a release of ten fix: commits → MINOR bump.

Keep a Changelog sections

## [1.4.0] — 2026-06-28

### Added
- feat commits

### Changed
- refactor commits; BREAKING CHANGE goes here with migration note

### Deprecated
### Removed
### Fixed
- fix commits
### Security
- security commits

Use ISO 8601 dates (YYYY-MM-DD). Link version headers to the git tag diff URL.

Git range commands

# Commits between two tags
git log v1.3.0..v1.4.0 --pretty=format:'%s'

# Commits since last tag to HEAD
git log $(git describe --tags --abbrev=0)..HEAD --pretty=format:'%s'

# With author and hash (for detailed notes)
git log v1.3.0..v1.4.0 --pretty=format:'%h %an %s'

CI integration pattern

# .github/workflows/release.yml (excerpt)
- name: Generate changelog
  run: |
    git log ${{ env.PREV_TAG }}..HEAD --pretty=format:'%s' \
      | python scripts/generate_changelog.py \
          --next-version ${{ env.NEXT_VERSION }} \
          --format markdown >> CHANGELOG.md

Block the pipeline if commit messages don't follow Conventional Commits format — a linting step before changelog generation prevents garbage output.

Commit message linting rules

A valid Conventional Commit: <type>(<optional scope>): <description>

Valid types: feat, fix, docs, style, refactor, perf, test, build, ci, chore, revert.

Reject: commits with no type prefix; commits with WIP: prefix; commits longer than 72 characters in the subject line.

Steps

Get the commit range. Tag-to-tag or last-tag-to-HEAD.
Parse commit messages. Classify each as feat / fix / breaking / no-bump.
Compute semantic bump. Take the maximum across all commits in the range.
Group into Keep a Changelog sections. Added / Changed / Fixed / Security.
Write the changelog entry. Date, version, sections. Link version to git tag diff.
Lint commit messages before finalising — reject any that don't conform.
Verify. Check that the computed version matches the expected bump; confirm the changelog entry renders correctly in Markdown preview.

Review checklist

Version bump correct — MAJOR for breaking; MINOR for feat; PATCH for fix.
Breaking changes called out — with migration note in Changed section.
Dates in ISO 8601 — YYYY-MM-DD.
Version header links — to the git tag diff URL.
Commit lint clean — no malformed commits included in the changelog.
No noise sections — empty sections omitted.

Rules

Never version-bump for refactor:, docs:, chore:, ci:, test: commits — these are maintenance/internal, not user-facing changes.
BREAKING CHANGE: in the commit footer is a MAJOR bump regardless of the commit type prefix.
A changelog entry for an unreleased version should be marked ## [Unreleased] until the tag is cut.

What ships with it

Read from the repository

Just SKILL.md. No reference files, no scripts.