Release Note Generation Skill

Generate professional release notes for PowerToys milestones by collecting merged PRs, summarizing each PR with the local CLI agent, grouping by label, and producing user-facing summaries.

Output Directory

All generated artifacts are placed under Generated Files/ReleaseNotes/ at the repository root (gitignored).

Generated Files/ReleaseNotes/
├── milestone_prs.json           # Raw PR data from GitHub
├── sorted_prs.csv               # Sorted PR list with Copilot summaries
├── prs_with_milestone.csv       # Milestone assignment tracking
├── grouped_csv/                 # PRs grouped by label (one CSV per label)
├── grouped_md/                  # Generated markdown summaries per label
└── v{VERSION}-release-notes.md  # Final consolidated release notes

When to Use This Skill

• Generate release notes for a milestone
• Summarize PRs merged in a release
• Generate per-PR review summaries locally for release-notes copy
• Assign milestones to PRs missing them
• Collect PRs between two commits/tags
• Update README.md for a new version
• Prepare GitHub release assets (download installers/symbols + compute hashes)

Prerequisites

• GitHub CLI (gh) installed and authenticated — The collection script uses gh pr view and gh api graphql to fetch PR metadata and co-author information. Run gh auth status to verify; if not logged in, run gh auth login first. See Step 1.0.0 for details.
• MCP Server: github-mcp-server installed (used to fetch PR diffs/files for the local-agent review step)
• For prepare-release-assets.ps1 only: Azure CLI authenticated against the Microsoft tenant (az login) with the azure-devops extension; access to the microsoft/Dart ADO project

Required Variables

⚠️ Before starting, confirm {{ReleaseVersion}} with the user. If not provided, ASK: "What release version are we generating notes for? (e.g., 0.98)"

Workflow Overview

┌────────────────────────────────┐
│ 1.0 Verify gh auth + MemberList │
└────────────────────────────────┘
              ↓
┌────────────────────────────────┐
│ 1.1 Collect PRs (stable range) │
└────────────────────────────────┘
              ↓
┌────────────────────────────────┐
│ 1.2 Assign Milestones           │
└────────────────────────────────┘
              ↓
┌────────────────────────────────┐
│ 2.1–2.4 Label PRs (auto+human)  │
└────────────────────────────────┘
              ↓
┌────────────────────────────────┐
│ 3.1 Local-agent PR summaries    │
│ (writes CopilotSummary)         │
└────────────────────────────────┘
              ↓
┌────────────────────────────────┐
│ 3.2 (Optional) Refresh PR data  │
└────────────────────────────────┘
              ↓
┌────────────────────────────────┐
│ 3.3 Group by label              │
│ (grouped_csv)                   │
└────────────────────────────────┘
              ↓
┌────────────────────────────────┐
│ 4.1 Summarize (grouped_md)      │
└────────────────────────────────┘
              ↓
┌────────────────────────────────┐
│ 4.2 Final notes (v{VERSION}.md) │
└────────────────────────────────┘

Detailed workflow docs

Do not read all steps at once—only read the step you are executing.

• Step 1: Collection & Milestones
• Step 2: Labeling PRs
• Step 3: Reviews & Grouping
• Step 4: Summarization

Available Scripts

References

• Sample Output - Example summary formatting
• Detailed Instructions - Legacy full documentation

Conventions

• Terminal usage: Disabled by default; only run scripts when user explicitly requests
• Batch generation: Generate ALL grouped_md files in one pass, then human reviews
• PR order: Preserve order from sorted_prs.csv in all outputs
• Label filtering: Keeps Product-*, Area-*, GitHub*, *Plugin, Issue-*

Troubleshooting