Automatically generate structured release notes directly from your GitHub issues and pull requests.
Categorize changes, highlight contributors, and maintain consistent release documentation — all fully automated.

• Overview
• Motivation
• Quick Start
• Requirements
• Configuration
• Example Workflow
• Feature Tutorials
• Troubleshooting
• Developer & Contribution Guide
• License & Support

Release Notes Scrapper Action scans issues, pull requests, and commits to create categorized release notes for your project releases.
It groups changes by labels (e.g., “Bugfixes 🛠”, “New Features 🎉”) and extracts relevant content from PR descriptions or CodeRabbit summaries.

• Fully automated release note generation
• Categorization by labels or issue hierarchy
• Built-in “Service Chapters” to detect missing or incomplete release notes
• Configurable templates and icons
• Smart duplicate detection

Good documentation isn’t optional — it’s your project’s memory.
This Action was created to make structured release documentation effortless and consistent across teams.

👉 For the full background and design principles, see docs/motivation.md

Add the following step to your workflow to start generating release notes.

- name: Generate Release Notes
  id: release_notes_scrapper
  uses: AbsaOSS/generate-release-notes@v1
  env:
    GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
  with:
    tag-name: "v1.2.0"
    chapters: |
      - {"title": "Breaking Changes 💥", "label": "breaking-change"}          # legacy single-label form
      - {"title": "New Features 🎉", "labels": "feature, enhancement"}        # multi-label form (comma separated)
      - {"title": "Bugfixes 🛠", "labels": ["bug", "error"]}                  # multi-label form (YAML list)

Example output snippet:

### New Features 🎉
- #23 _Feature title_ author is @root assigned to @neo developed by @morpheus in #24
  - Added support for multi-factor authentication.

### Bugfixes 🛠
- PR: #25 _Copy not allowed_ author is @dependabot[bot] assigned to @smith developed by @smith
  - File copy operation has been implemented.

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

That’s it — the Action will:

1. Fetch all closed issues and PRs from latest till now.
2. Categorize them by labels.
3. Extract release note text and contributors.
4. Output a Markdown section ready for publishing.

To run this action successfully, make sure your environment meets the following requirements:

Only a few inputs are required to get started:

For the full input and output reference, see Configuration reference.
For how label → chapter mapping and aggregation works, see Custom Chapters Behavior.

Important: tag defined by tag-name must exist in the repository; otherwise, the action fails.

You can integrate this Action with your release process.

name: "Create Release & Notes"
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      tag-name:
        description: 'Existing git tag to use for this draft release. Syntax: "v[0-9]+.[0-9]+.[0-9]+". Ensure the tag is created and pushed before running.'
        required: true

jobs:
  release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Generate Release Notes
        id: notes
        uses: AbsaOSS/generate-release-notes@v1
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        with:
          tag-name: ${{ github.event.inputs.tag-name }}
          chapters: |
            - {"title": "New Features 🎉", "labels": "enhancement, feature"}
            - {"title": "Bugfixes 🛠", "labels": "error, bug"}
            - {"title": "Infrastructure 🚧", "label": "infrastructure"}
            - {"title": "Documentation 📚", "label": "documentation"}

      - name: Create Draft Release
        uses: softprops/action-gh-release@v2
        with:
          name: ${{ github.event.inputs.tag-name }}
          tag_name: ${{ github.event.inputs.tag-name }}
          body: ${{ steps.notes.outputs.release_notes }}
          draft: true

For more complex automation scenarios, see the examples folder.

Each feature is documented separately — click a name below to learn configuration, examples, and best practices.

Category legend (keep it consistent across docs)

• Extraction – how notes are gathered (core behavior).
• Filtering – what gets included/excluded.
• Quality & Warnings – health checks that keep releases clean.
• Time Range – how the release window is determined.
• Formatting & Presentation – how lines look.
• Diagnostics & Technical – tooling, logs, debug.

Common questions and quick pointers.

More Q&A: see the Custom Chapters FAQ.

We love community contributions!

• Developer Guide
• Contributing Guide

Typical contributions include:

• Fixing bugs or edge cases
• Improving documentation or examples
• Adding new configuration options

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. See the LICENSE file for full terms.

• Issues
• Discussions

Thanks to all contributors and teams who helped evolve this Action. Your feedback drives continuous improvement and automation quality.