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gh relnote: release notes from conventional commits, inside the GitHub CLI

gh-relnote is a GitHub CLI extension that bundles relnote. It reads commit messages in your clone, groups feat, fix, and breaking changes, and hands the result to gh release create.

gh-relnote on GitHub · relnote · Compare to git-cliff and gh --generate-notes

Install

gh extension install loki-inu/gh-relnote
gh relnote --help

Needs gh, git, and Python 3.11+ on PATH. No pip install and no third-party packages: relnote v0.2.0 is vendored in the extension. Set PYTHON=/path/to/python3 to pick an interpreter. Upgrade with gh extension upgrade relnote.

Preview the notes

gh relnote                          # latest tag → HEAD
gh relnote --since v1.2.0 --no-bots
gh relnote --output notes.md --quiet

Output is Markdown for a GitHub Release body, grouped as Features, Fixes, Breaking, and Other. Merge commits are skipped by default, --no-bots drops dependabot and renovate, and subjects that look like tokens or keys are never printed.

Create the release in one step

gh relnote create v1.3.0 --draft
gh relnote create v1.3.0 --title "v1.3.0" -- --no-bots --max 50
gh relnote create v1.3.0 -- --changelog CHANGELOG.md --changelog-title v1.3.0

create runs relnote for the latest tag to HEAD, writes the notes to a temp file, then runs gh release create TAG … --notes-file. Flags before -- go to gh release create (--draft, --prerelease, --title, --target, asset paths). Flags after -- go to relnote.

gh relnote vs gh release create --generate-notes

	`gh relnote`	`--generate-notes`
Source	Commit messages in your local clone	Merged pull requests on GitHub
Grouping	Conventional Commit type (feat, fix, breaking)	PR labels via `.github/release.yml`
Works for direct-to-main repos	Yes	Lists little or nothing without PRs
Preview before pushing a tag	Yes, offline	Online only, via the GitHub API
Contributor and PR links	Author names and short SHAs	Yes, with @-mentions and PR links

If your team merges through PRs with good labels, --generate-notes is the better default. If your history already speaks Conventional Commits, or you push straight to main, gh relnote gives a cleaner body.

Not using gh?

The same notes are available as a plain CLI (pip install git+https://github.com/loki-inu/relnote.git) and as a GitHub Action (loki-inu/relnote@v0.3.0). See the relnote docs.