Release Notes Generator 📝 + 📆 = ✅

A CLI tool that generates structured, executive-ready Markdown release notes from a GitHub repository for a specified date range. It can also be used as a GitHub Action to generate release notes and post them to Notion, Slack, and Discord.

Features

• Extracts merged Pull Requests within a date range via the GitHub REST API
• Generates a structured Markdown release report with:
  • Executive Summary — PR count, contributors, code delta, focus areas
  • Changes by Category — Features, Bug Fixes, Security, Refactoring, Other
  • Contributors — Sorted leaderboard by PR count
• Automatic PR categorisation via labels with title-keyword fallback
• Handles pagination for large repositories (5,000+ PRs)
• Structured logging via pino
• Runs locally as a CLI and as a scheduled GitHub Action (every Thursday)
• Multi-channel Publishing: Automatically publish release notes to:
  • Notion (as a new database page)
  • Slack (as a formatted message)
  • Discord (as a formatted message, handles splitting for length)

Requirements

• Node.js 20+
• A GitHub personal access token (classic or fine-grained) with repo read access
• (Optional) Notion Integration Token and Database ID
• (Optional) Slack Webhook URL
• (Optional) Discord Webhook URL

Installation

npm install
npm run build

Usage

CLI

node dist/cli.js \
  --owner <repo-owner> \
  --repo <repo-name> \
  --from 2026-01-01 \
  --to 2026-01-31 \
  --github-token <token> \
  --output release-notes/release-notes.md \
  --publish-slack \
  --publish-discord \
  --publish-notion

Example — YOUR_COMPANY_NAME Admin Dashboard

Generate release notes for YOUR_ORG/stellar-dashboard over February 2026 and publish to all channels:

# Using the compiled CLI
node dist/cli.js \
  --owner YOUR_ORG \
  --repo stellar-dashboard \
  --from 2026-02-01 \
  --to 2026-02-17 \
  --github-token $GH_TOKEN \
  --output release-notes/stellar-dashboard-release-notes.md \
  --publish-slack \
  --publish-discord

Or during development (no build step required):

npm run dev -- \
  --owner YOUR_ORG \
  --repo stellar-dashboard \
  --from 2026-02-01 \
  --to 2026-02-17 \
  --publish-slack

Parameters

Flag	Required	Description
--owner	Yes	GitHub repository owner
--repo	Yes	GitHub repository name
--from	Yes	Start date (YYYY-MM-DD)
--to	Yes	End date (YYYY-MM-DD)
--output	No	Output file path (default: release-notes/repo_from_to.md)
--github-token	No	GitHub token (fallback: GH_TOKEN env var)
--include-labels	No	Comma-separated labels to include
--exclude-labels	No	Comma-separated labels to exclude
--publish-slack	No	Publish generated notes to Slack
--publish-discord	No	Publish generated notes to Discord
--publish-notion	No	Publish generated notes to Notion

Environment Variables

Create a .env file based on .env.example to store these secrets.

Variable	Description
GH_TOKEN	Fallback GitHub authentication
LOG_LEVEL	Pino log level (default: info)
NOTION_API_KEY	Notion Integration Token (starts with secret_)
NOTION_DATABASE_ID	Notion Database ID
SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL	Slack Incoming Webhook URL
DISCORD_WEBHOOK_URL	Discord Incoming Webhook URL

Development

# Run without building (via tsx)
npm run dev -- --owner octokit --repo rest.js --from 2026-01-01 --to 2026-01-31

# Run tests
npm test

# Type-check only
npm run lint

Integrations Setup

Slack

1. Go to Slack API: Incoming Webhooks.
2. Create a new App or select an existing one.
3. Enable Incoming Webhooks and click "Add New Webhook to Workspace".
4. Select the channel to post to.
5. Copy the Webhook URL and add it to your .env file as SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL.

Discord

1. Open your Discord server settings > Integrations > Webhooks.
2. Click "New Webhook".
3. Copy the Webhook URL and add it to your .env file as DISCORD_WEBHOOK_URL.

Notion

1. Go to Notion Integrations and create a new integration.
2. Share your target database with this integration connection.
3. Get the Database ID from the URL.
4. Add NOTION_API_KEY and NOTION_DATABASE_ID to your .env file.
5. Ensure your database has the following properties:
   • Name (Title)
   • Date Range (Text)
   • Week (Number)
   • Status (Select, with a "Published" option)

GitHub Action

The repository includes workflows for scheduling these tasks. You can now use the main CLI within your actions to publish to multiple destinations by setting the appropriate environment secrets in your repository settings.

Exit Codes

Code	Meaning
0	Success
1	Validation error
2	GitHub API error
3	Unexpected error

License

MIT