openseo-release-notes

OpenSEO release notes

Cut a release for this repo end to end. The deliverables are a version bump in package.json, a new release-notes/v<version>.md, and a PR against origin/main titled release: v<version>.

1. Bump the version

• Read package.json. If the branch has already bumped version, treat that as the source of truth and do not change it.
• Otherwise bump the patch version (e.g. 0.0.19 → 0.0.20). Only bump minor/major if explicitly asked.

2. Collect the changes since the last release

• Find the latest tag: git tag --sort=-creatordate | head -1. Verify the branch is up to date with origin/main (git fetch origin main && git log HEAD..origin/main --oneline should be empty; flag it if not).
• List commits: git log <last-tag>..HEAD --oneline. You can also run pnpm release:notes for a raw commit inventory — use it only as a checklist of candidate changes, never as the draft's structure (its Improved/Changed/Docs sections must not appear in the notes).
• For each commit, fetch the PR body and author (gh pr view <num> --repo <repo> --json title,body,author) — squash-commit subjects can be stale. The (#NN) in commit subjects can reference either repo: try bensenescu/open-seo (origin) first and fall back to every-app/open-seo (public) — outside contributors' PRs and their handles live on the public repo. Commits with no (#NN) may still be an outside contribution with a public PR (gh pr list --repo every-app/open-seo --state merged --author <login>); check git log --format=%an for the author. Verify claims against the final code when a PR body and commit subject disagree (features get reverted before merge).
• Record the PR author's GitHub handle alongside each change so the bullet can credit them.

3. Draft the notes

Write release-notes/v<version>.md. release-notes/v0.0.24.md is the canonical style exemplar — match it (v0.0.25 and later follow the same style); v0.0.23 and earlier are the old verbose style, never imitate them. The notes are a scannable digest, not documentation: the whole file fits on one screen (roughly 15 lines including headings), and every line earns its place.

Format:

• Top line: a fragment naming the release's 2–3 highlights ("GSC UI, improved app layout and beta in app agent."). Not a "This release brings…" sentence.
• Sections: ## What's new and ## Fixed only. There is no "Improved" section — an improvement is either headline-worthy (What's new) or it's cut.
• What's new bullets name the feature; they don't sell it. One short line each ("Redesigned the app layout", "Get GSC Insights inside the app") — no em-dash feature tours, no "so you can…" benefit copy, no lists of everything the feature touches. If the name alone is ambiguous, one clause of plain-words context is the maximum.
• At most one sub-bullet per feature, one short line: the single most useful detail, a requirement ("Requires OPENROUTER_API_KEY"), or an expectation-setter.
• Label rough features "(Beta)" and set expectations honestly, including pointing at the better alternative for now. The expectation-setter rides the top-level line after a dash ("(Beta) In app agent - MCP is still recommended, but we'll be working to improve this during the summer."), keeping the sub-bullet slot free for a requirement or detail.
• Fixed: 3–5 bullets, one plain sentence each, only bugs a user plausibly hit and would recognize ("Claude answers in AI search work again."). No error codes, status codes, schema/infra vocabulary, or mechanism. If more than four qualify, keep the ones hit in core flows (searches, audits, tracking, MCP answers) and drop fixes for recovering self-inflicted state (re-adding, un-archiving, refreshing) first.
• Credit the contributor. End the bullet with — thanks @handle for outside contributors only — never for the maintainer's own PRs (bensenescu). Credit goes on the top-level bullet, not sub-bullets. Multiple contributors: — thanks @a, @b.
• End with: Full Changelog: https://github.com/every-app/open-seo/compare/v<prev>...v<version>

Curation — this is where the work is. Cut aggressively; the Full Changelog link covers the long tail:

• Only changes to the product itself — the app, the MCP tools, the SEO data/features someone running OpenSEO actually uses. Litmus test per bullet: would a self-hoster notice this while using the product? Caring in the abstract (a new backend option, a raised cap) is not enough.
• Do NOT mention:
  • Marketing-website (web/) changes — landing pages, copy, positioning, blog.
  • Pricing / plans / subscription / billing — paywalls, free-trial/plan changes, Autumn config. Hosted-commercial concerns, irrelevant to self-hosters.
  • Onboarding-flow-only changes — signup/onboarding chat, profiling steps, upgrade rails, email-verification UX. Not a product capability, even when sizable.
  • Hosted-app internals & meta — analytics, specs/ADRs, CI, refactors, dependency bumps.
  • Invisible-to-the-user work, even when product-relevant — security hardening, raised caps/limits, stability/memory/perf fixes, database/backend options and migrations. A user reading the notes should recognize every line from using the product; if they'd only notice it in a config file or an incident that no longer happens, cut it.
• When torn between including and cutting, cut. A 4-bullet What's new that gets read beats a 10-bullet one that doesn't.
• Never invent features — every claim must trace to a commit.
• Numbers in bullets are usually selling — cut them; if one is genuinely load-bearing, quote the conservative, typical figure, never a cherry-picked best case.

4. Review and verify

1. Spawn a reviewer subagent with: the draft, the guidelines above, the per-commit facts you gathered, and repo access. It returns numbered review comments citing which guideline each violates. Its charge includes verbosity: flag any bullet that sells instead of names, any second sub-bullet, any Fixed bullet with mechanism vocabulary, and anything that pushes the file past one screen.
2. For each substantive comment, spawn a verification subagent (in parallel) that adversarially checks the comment against the actual commits/code and verdicts APPLY / APPLY-MODIFIED / REJECT.
3. Apply only verified comments.

5. Open the PR

• Commit the version bump, release notes, and any skill changes on a branch named claude/v<version> (use the current branch if it already follows this pattern).

• Push to origin and open a PR against main titled exactly release: v<version>. PR body: the release notes content.

• Do not tag or publish the GitHub release — that happens after merge. After merge, run pnpm release:publish. It reads the version from package.json and publishes the matching release-notes/v<version>.md to every-app/open-seo.

• The equivalent command is:

  gh release create v<version> \
    --repo every-app/open-seo \
    --title v<version> \
    --notes-file release-notes/v<version>.md