Plugin: Release Notes Generator

[neubig]

Summary

Create a release notes generator plugin that produces consistent, well-structured release notes across OpenHands repositories. This plugin can be triggered via GitHub Actions on new release tags following semver patterns (e.g., v*.*.*).

Background

From the Product+App+Agent Coordination Meeting (2026-03-06): Current release notes are inconsistent across repositories—some are too detailed (Software Agent SDK) while others lack sufficient detail (OpenHands). We need a standardized approach.

What Makes Good Release Notes

Principles

• Concise but informative: Not too verbose, but enough context for users to understand impact. In particular, the agent should omit small changes that are not worth mentioning, and group together multiple changes that form a single coherent feature or fix.
• User-focused: Written from the perspective of what users care about, not internal implementation details
• Scannable: Easy to quickly find relevant changes

Structure

Release notes should include these clearly categorized sections:

## [version] - YYYY-MM-DD

### ✨ New Features
- New capabilities and enhancements

### ⚠️ Breaking Changes
- Changes that require user action or may break existing workflows

### 🐛 Bug Fixes
- Issues that have been resolved

### 📚 Documentation
- Documentation improvements (optional, can be collapsed)

### 🏗️ Internal/Infrastructure
- CI/CD, refactoring, dependencies (optional, can be collapsed or omitted)

### 👥 New Contributors
- Highlight first-time contributors with links to their profiles

Content Guidelines

• Each entry should be a single line with a link to the PR/commit
• Group related changes together
• Use imperative mood ("Add feature" not "Added feature")
• Include PR number and author: Add dark mode support (#123) @username
• For breaking changes, briefly explain migration path

Implementation Requirements

Trigger

• GitHub Action workflow triggered on release tags matching semver pattern: v[0-9]+.[0-9]+.[0-9]+*
• Can also support manual triggering with tag input

Inputs

• tag: The release tag to generate notes for
• previous_tag: (optional) Override automatic detection of previous release
• include_internal: (optional, default: false) Include internal/infrastructure changes

Behavior

1. Detect previous release tag automatically (or use provided override)
2. Collect all commits/PRs between previous tag and current tag
3. Categorize changes based on:
   • Conventional commit prefixes (feat:, fix:, docs:, chore:, BREAKING:)
   • PR labels (e.g., breaking-change, bug, enhancement, documentation)
4. Identify first-time contributors by checking commit history
5. Generate markdown following the structure above
6. Output can be used to update GitHub release notes or a CHANGELOG.md file

Example Output

## [v1.2.0] - 2026-03-06

### ✨ New Features  
- Add support for Claude Sonnet 4.6 model (#445) @contributor1
- Implement parallel tool execution (#438) @contributor2

### ⚠️ Breaking Changes
- Remove deprecated `--legacy` CLI flag (#456) @maintainer

### 🐛 Bug Fixes
- Fix WebSocket reconnection on network interruption (#451) @contributor3
- Resolve memory leak in long-running sessions (#447) @maintainer

### 👥 New Contributors
- @contributor3 made their first contribution in #451

**Full Changelog**: https://github.com/org/repo/compare/v1.1.0...v1.2.0

References

• Discussed in: Product+App+Agent Coordination Meeting (2026-03-06)
• Linear ticket: AGE-859 (will be marked as duplicate of this issue)
• Similar implementations: release-drafter, git-cliff

[openhands-ai]

I'm on it! neubig can track my progress at all-hands.dev

[openhands-ai]

Final Summary

I have successfully implemented the Release Notes Generator plugin as requested in issue #97. The changes have already been pushed and PR #98 has been created: #98

Checklist - Requirements Addressed

✅ Plugin created with GitHub Action that triggers on semver tags (v[0-9]+.[0-9]+.[0-9]+*)
✅ Manual triggering supported with tag input via workflow_dispatch
✅ Inputs implemented: tag, previous-tag (optional), include-internal (default: false), output-format
✅ Automatic previous tag detection with optional override
✅ Change categorization based on:

• Conventional commit prefixes (feat:, fix:, docs:, chore:, BREAKING:)
• PR labels (breaking-change, bug, enhancement, documentation)
  ✅ First-time contributor identification with highlighting in output
  ✅ Markdown output following the specified structure with emojis (⚠️, ✨, 🐛, 📚, 🏗️, 👥)
  ✅ Full Changelog link included at the bottom
  ✅ Tests added: 35 unit tests covering categorization, formatting, and structure
  ✅ All 47 tests pass (including existing repository tests)

Files Created (7 files, 1360 lines)

File	Purpose
plugins/release-notes/SKILL.md	Plugin definition with /release-notes trigger
plugins/release-notes/README.md	Comprehensive documentation
plugins/release-notes/action.yml	Composite GitHub Action
plugins/release-notes/scripts/generate_release_notes.py	Main generation logic
plugins/release-notes/workflows/release-notes.yml	Example workflow
plugins/release-notes/skills/releasenotes	Symlink to existing skill
tests/test_release_notes_generator.py	Unit tests

Changes are Concise

• Only files directly related to the plugin implementation were added
• No modifications to existing files
• Used symlink to existing releasenotes skill rather than duplicating content