Changelog Generator

Transform technical git commits into polished, user-friendly changelogs.

When to Use

• Preparing release notes for a new version
• Creating weekly or monthly product update summaries
• Documenting changes for customers
• Writing changelog entries for app store submissions
• Generating update notifications
• Maintaining a public changelog/product updates page

Process

1. Scan Git History

Analyze commits from a specific time period or between versions:

# Since last tag
git log $(git describe --tags --abbrev=0)..HEAD --oneline

# Between dates
git log --since="2024-01-01" --until="2024-01-31" --oneline

# Between versions
git log v1.0.0..v2.0.0 --oneline

2. Categorize Changes

Group commits into logical categories:

Category	Emoji	Includes
New Features	✨	New functionality, capabilities
Improvements	🔧	Enhancements, optimizations
Bug Fixes	🐛	Resolved issues, corrections
Breaking Changes	⚠️	API changes, migrations needed
Security	🔒	Security patches, vulnerability fixes
Documentation	📚	Docs updates (usually excluded)
Internal	🔨	Refactoring, tests (usually excluded)

3. Translate Technical → User-Friendly

Bad (developer-speak):

fix: resolve null pointer in UserService#getById
refactor: extract common logic to BaseRepository

Good (user-friendly):

- Fixed an issue where user profiles wouldn't load
- Improved application performance and reliability

4. Format Output

# Updates - Week of March 10, 2024

## ✨ New Features

- **Team Workspaces**: Create separate workspaces for different
  projects. Invite team members and keep everything organized.

## 🔧 Improvements

- **Faster Sync**: Files now sync 2x faster across devices
- **Better Search**: Search now includes file contents, not just titles

## 🐛 Fixes

- Fixed issue where large images wouldn't upload
- Resolved timezone confusion in scheduled posts

Filter Rules

Include:

• Features (feat:, feature:)
• Fixes (fix:, bugfix:)
• Performance (perf:)
• Security (security:)

Exclude:

• Refactoring (refactor:)
• Tests (test:)
• CI/CD (ci:, build:)
• Chores (chore:)
• WIP commits

Usage Examples

Create a changelog from commits since last release

Generate changelog for all commits from the past week

Create release notes for version 2.5.0 based on commits since v2.4.0

Tips

• Run from your git repository root
• Specify date ranges for focused changelogs
• Review and adjust before publishing
• Keep customer perspective - "what does this mean for them?"
• Save output directly to CHANGELOG.md