cockpit-changelog

You are drafting GitHub release notes for Cockpit (@surething/cockpit). The audience is engineers who installed the npm package or who land on the GitHub release page from social — not contributors reading a commit log.

You write release notes in the existing project voice. Get the voice from samples first; never improvise.

Inputs

• $ARGUMENTS — from-tag to-tag. If absent, default to from = previous tag, to = HEAD. Resolve concretely:

  CUR=$(git describe --tags --abbrev=0)               # or arg 2
  PREV=$(git describe --tags --abbrev=0 "$CUR^")      # or arg 1
  

Step 1 — Read the actual commits

git log "$PREV..$CUR" --pretty=format:'%h %s%n%b%n---'

Read every commit body, not just the title. The titles are conventional-commits style (feat(scope):, fix(ui):, docs:, chore(deps):); the bodies often hold the user-facing rationale that belongs in the notes.

Step 2 — Read the project's voice (REQUIRED)

Pull two recent hand-authored release notes as style references:

gh release view v1.0.195 --repo Surething-io/cockpit --json body --jq .body
gh release view v1.0.193 --repo Surething-io/cockpit --json body --jq .body

These are the canonical examples. Match their tone, structure, emoji choices, and code-block style. Do not invent a different format.

Voice guide (distilled from the samples)

• Open with the headline change, not the version number. The version is in the title — the body shouldn't repeat it.
• Group by theme, not by commit type. Use ## ✨ New: <feature> / ## 🐛 Fix: <area> / ## 📚 Docs: … / ## 🌐 Site: … / ## 📦 Misc: …. One headline per group, body is short prose under it.
• Prose, not bullet lists of commit titles. A reader should learn what changed, why, and how to use it. They should not read 12 feat(x): lines.
• Concrete commands when relevant. If the release adds a CLI behavior, show a bash block with the new invocation. If a feature has a screenshot-able UI surface, name it ("Skills sidebar", "the new + Add Skill button").
• Never include a **Full Changelog**: https://github.com/.../compare/... tail. The auto-generated tail is GitHub's default for un-edited releases; the project's hand-authored convention does not use it. Strip it if your draft accidentally lands one.
• Drop the noise. Commits that do not affect users get cut: dependency bumps with no user impact, CI tweaks, internal refactors, doc-typo fixes, lint config. If a release is all noise, say so honestly in one line ("Internal cleanup release; no user-visible changes.") and stop.
• Length matches substance. A real feature = a paragraph + a code block. A small fix = one line. A 12-line release for a 2-character bugfix is worse than a 2-line release.

Section heading vocabulary (use exactly these emojis)

Emoji + word	When
## ✨ New: <topic>	New feature or capability the user can try
## 🐛 Fix: <area>	User-visible bug fix
## 📚 Docs: <topic>	README / GUIDE / Documentation changes the user might notice
## 🌐 Site: <topic>	opencockpit.dev improvements
## 📦 Misc: <topic>	Package metadata, npm description, keywords, anything user-facing but not a feature
## ⚙️ Internal	(use sparingly) Only if you must mention an internal change because something else depends on it

If unsure between two emojis, look at how v1.0.195 / v1.0.193 chose. Mimic.

Step 3 — Draft, then save to a temp file

Output the markdown to /tmp/release-notes.md. Do not call gh release edit yourself — that's the human's call after they read the draft. Just write the file and report the path.

cat > /tmp/release-notes.md <<'EOF'
<your draft here>
EOF
echo "Draft written to /tmp/release-notes.md ($(wc -c </tmp/release-notes.md) bytes)"

Step 4 — Self-review checklist (before reporting "done")

Run through these against your draft. If any fails, fix it, don't ship it:

• No **Full Changelog**: https://github.com/.../compare/... line anywhere
• No bullet lists of feat: / fix: commit titles
• Every ## heading uses one of the 6 sanctioned emojis
• At least one concrete command or named UI element per ✨ New: section
• Internal-only commits (CI, lockfile, refactor) are cut, not summarized
• Length is proportional to substance — no padding
• Tone matches v1.0.195 / v1.0.193 (calm, factual, no hype words like "exciting", "thrilled", "pleased")

Refusals

• Never call gh release edit directly. Output a file; let the human apply it.
• Never copy commit titles verbatim into a bullet list and call that "release notes".
• Never add a Full Changelog tail link, even if GitHub's auto-generated text included one.
• Never invent features that aren't in the commit list. If the diff doesn't show it, it didn't ship.

Reference

• Sister skill: docs/skills/cockpit-release/SKILL.md (full release pipeline; this skill is invoked by it at Step 6)
• Style samples (live): gh release view v1.0.195 --repo Surething-io/cockpit, v1.0.193, v1.0.196