Claude Release Skill

A Claude Code skill for automated release management.

Handles version bumping, git tagging, AI changelog generation, and GitHub Release creation for any project with a package.json.

Features

• Beta & Stable releases — automatic version calculation
• Version conflict detection — compares beta base against latest stable tag on default branch
• AI changelog — parses commits and rewrites into user-facing release notes
• GitHub Release — creates draft releases with gh CLI
• Multi-project compatible — no hardcoded branch names

Install

Copy into your Claude Code skills directory:

# Project-level (tracked in git)
mkdir -p .claude/skills/release
cp -r . .claude/skills/release/

# Or user-level (global, all projects)
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/release
cp -r . ~/.claude/skills/release/

Usage

/release beta          # Beta pre-release on current branch
/release beta --dry-run  # Preview only
/release               # Interactive — picks branch and type

Version Conflict Resolution

When the default branch (main/master) has a stable release that's >= the beta base version, the skill detects the conflict and prompts you to choose a bump type:

Stable	Beta Current	Conflict?	Patch Result	Minor Result	Major Result
3.0.0	3.0.0-beta.2	Yes	3.0.1-beta.1	3.1.0-beta.1	4.0.0-beta.1
3.0.0	3.1.0-beta.1	No	3.1.0-beta.2	—	—

Structure

├── SKILL.md                      # Skill definition (Claude reads this)
├── scripts/
│   ├── release.sh                # Core release script
│   └── parse-commits.sh          # Commit parser for changelog
└── references/
    └── version-schemes.md        # Version bump rules reference

Requirements

• git, node, npm
• gh (GitHub CLI) — optional, for GitHub Releases
• sort with -V flag (GNU coreutils / macOS default)

License

MIT