Release Note Generation Skill

Generate professional PowerToys release notes by collecting merged PRs, summarizing each PR with the local CLI agent, grouping by label, and producing user-facing summaries. Stable and preview releases share the same PR metadata, attribution, grouping, and formatting rules.

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

Preview-release runs use an isolated subdirectory:

Generated Files/ReleaseNotes/preview-<buildId>/
├── release-context.json
├── delta-commits.json
├── delta-prs.json
├── removed-prs.json
├── unattributed-commits.json
├── MemberList.md
├── milestone_prs.json
├── sorted_prs.csv
├── release-notes.md
├── hashes.md
├── release-manifest.json        # Local audit artifact; never uploaded
├── assets-manifest.json         # Local asset inventory; never uploaded
└── final-review.md

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)
• Prepare a complete draft preview release from an ADO build URL or build ID
• Compare preview contents across main and stable branch transitions

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](./references/step1-collection.md) for details.
• MCP Server: github-mcp-server installed (used to fetch PR diffs/files for the local-agent review step)
• For preview releases and [prepare-release-assets.ps1](./scripts/prepare-release-assets.ps1): Azure CLI authenticated against the Microsoft tenant (az login) with the azure-devops extension; access to the microsoft/Dart ADO project

Required Variables

For a stable release, confirm {{ReleaseVersion}} with the user before starting. For a preview release, do not request a version: derive it from the candidate ADO build.

Preview mode instead requires one ADO build URL or numeric build ID. It derives the version, source commit, branch, and previous release without asking the user.

Scenario routing

Read [the scenario index](./references/scenarios/index.md), then follow only the selected scenario:

• [Stable release](./references/scenarios/stable-release.md) for milestone- or version-based release notes.
• [Preview release](./references/scenarios/preview-release.md) for an autonomous ADO-build-to-draft workflow.

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](./references/step1-collection.md)
• [Step 2: Labeling PRs](./references/step2-labeling.md)
• [Step 3: Reviews & Grouping](./references/step3-review-grouping.md)
• [Step 4: Summarization](./references/step4-summarization.md)

Available Scripts

References

• [Sample Output](./references/SampleOutput.md) - Example summary formatting
• [Detailed Instructions](./references/Instruction.md) - Legacy full documentation

Conventions

• Terminal usage: Disabled by default; only run scripts when user explicitly requests
• Preview automation: An explicit request to prepare a preview release, or invocation by the Prepare Preview Release agent, authorizes the canonical preview scripts
• Preview manifests: Keep release-manifest.json and assets-manifest.json in the local audit package; do not upload either file as a GitHub release asset
• Preview note layout: Place the Installer Hashes section immediately after the title and short public introduction, before Highlights and all change sections
• 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