patch-notes · @donchitos | Agent Skill Hub

!bash "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../hooks/yaml-helper.sh" resolve_config --keys automation

Automation mode: Resolve modes.automation (project.local.yaml → project.yaml → default collaborative). Every AskUserQuestion call and every file write follows .claude/docs/automation-modes.md (collaborative asks always · guided major-only · autonomous logs and proceeds; automation_always_ask categories always prompt).

Provenance check — before reading any history

Confirm the history you are about to read belongs to THIS game. Run this before Phase 2 and stop if it fails.

Sample the recent log: git log --oneline -20.
Classify every commit in the range, one at a time, into exactly one of:
- Game — changes the game the player plays: mechanics, content, balance, art, audio, UI, a bug in any of those.
- Framework / maintenance — changes CCGS itself or the project's tooling: subjects naming skills, hooks, agents, the test plan, CI, the framework's own docs. Excluded from player-facing notes, but not a reason to stop.
- Unclear — treat as framework. A commit you cannot confidently place is not one to write player copy from.
Then decide from the counts:
- At least one Game commit → proceed, using only those. Say how many of how many you used, so the reader can see the filter ran.
- Zero Game commits → stop, using the message below.

Filter per commit; do not stop on a repo that merely contains maintenance work. Every project built on this framework accumulates commits touching hooks, CI and skills — the game repo is the framework repo. An earlier version of this check listed "subjects naming the framework, its skills, hooks, agents or test plan" as a hard STOP, which fires on virtually every real project and contradicted its own step 2 whenever a history was mostly the game's. The danger was never that such commits exist; it is that they get rendered as player-facing copy. Excluding them addresses that exactly, and a repo-level stop does not.

Corroborate before you proceed, cheaply: the Game commits should name systems that appear in design/ and src/. If they name a product those directories never mention, that is the real wrong-history signal — stop.

If no commit in the range is this game's, say so and stop:

"The git history in this repo does not appear to belong to [game]. The recent commits describe [what they actually describe]. I cannot generate release notes from it — point me at the right history, or supply the change list directly."

Why this is a hard stop, not a warning. This exact failure is real, not hypothetical: a batch of framework-internal commits produced player-facing copy reading "Fixed an issue where progress from your last session could be lost on launch" — a session-hook timeout rendered as a gameplay fix for a game with no save system. It was fluent, plausible, and entirely false. A reader cannot tell the difference; only this check can.

Phase 1: Parse Arguments

version: the release version to generate notes for (e.g., 1.2.0)
--style: output style — brief (bullet points), detailed (with context), full (with developer commentary). Default: detailed.

If no version is provided, ask the user before proceeding.

Phase 2: Gather Change Data

Read the internal changelog at production/releases/[version]/changelog.md if it exists
Also check docs/CHANGELOG.md for the relevant version entry
Run git log between the previous release tag and current tag/HEAD as a fallback
Read sprint retrospectives in production/sprints/ for context
Read any balance change documents in design/balance/
Read bug fix records from QA if available

If no changelog data is available (neither production/releases/[version]/changelog.md nor a docs/CHANGELOG.md entry for this version exists, and git log is empty or unavailable):

"No changelog data found for [version]. Run /changelog [version] first to generate the internal changelog, then re-run /patch-notes [version]."

Verdict: BLOCKED — stop here without generating notes.

Phase 2b: Detect Tone Guide and Template

Tone guide detection — before drafting notes, check for writing style guidance:

Check .claude/docs/technical-preferences.md for any "tone", "voice", or "style" fields or sections.
Check docs/PATCH-NOTES-STYLE.md if it exists.
Check design/community/tone-guide.md if it exists.
If any source contains tone/voice/style instructions, extract them and apply them to the language and framing of the generated notes.
If no tone guidance is found anywhere, default to: player-friendly, non-technical language; enthusiastic but not hyperbolic; focus on what the player experiences, not what the developer changed.

Template detection — check whether a patch notes template exists:

Glob for docs/patch-notes-template.md and .claude/docs/templates/patch-notes-template.md.
If found at either location, read it and use it as the output structure for Phase 4 instead of the built-in style templates (Brief / Detailed / Full). Fill in the template's sections with the categorized data.
If not found, use the built-in style templates as defined in Phase 4.

Phase 3: Categorize and Translate

Categorize all changes into player-facing categories:

New Content: new features, maps, characters, items, modes
Gameplay Changes: balance adjustments, mechanic changes, progression changes
Quality of Life: UI improvements, convenience features, accessibility
Bug Fixes: grouped by system (combat, UI, networking, etc.)
Performance: optimization improvements players might notice
Known Issues: transparency about unresolved problems

Translate developer language to player language:

"Refactored damage calculation pipeline" → "Improved hit detection accuracy"
"Fixed null reference in inventory manager" → "Fixed a crash when opening inventory"
"Reduced GC allocations in combat loop" → "Improved combat performance"
Remove purely internal changes that don't affect players
Preserve specific numbers for balance changes (damage: 50 → 45)

Phase 4: Generate Patch Notes

Brief Style

# Patch [Version] — [Title]

**New**
- [Feature 1]
- [Feature 2]

**Changes**
- [Balance/mechanic change with before → after values]

**Fixes**
- [Bug fix 1]
- [Bug fix 2]

**Known Issues**
- [Issue 1]

Detailed Style

# Patch [Version] — [Title]
*[Date]*

## Highlights
[1-2 sentence summary of the most exciting changes]

## New Content
### [Feature Name]
[2-3 sentences describing the feature and why players should be excited]

## Gameplay Changes
### Balance
| Change | Before | After | Reason |
| ---- | ---- | ---- | ---- |
| [Item/ability] | [old value] | [new value] | [brief rationale] |

### Mechanics
- **[Change]**: [explanation of what changed and why]

## Quality of Life
- [Improvement with context]

## Bug Fixes
### Combat
- Fixed [description of what players experienced]

### UI
- Fixed [description]

### Networking
- Fixed [description]

## Performance
- [Improvement players will notice]

## Known Issues
- [Issue and workaround if available]

Full Style

Includes everything from Detailed, plus:

## Developer Commentary
### [Topic]
> [Developer insight into a major change — why it was made, what was considered,
> what the team learned. Written in first-person team voice.]

Phase 5: Review Output

Check the generated notes for:

No internal jargon (replace technical terms with player-friendly language)
No references to internal systems, tickets, or sprint numbers
Balance changes include before/after values
Bug fixes describe the player experience, not the technical cause
Tone matches the game's voice (adjust formality based on game style)

Phase 6: Save Patch Notes

Present the completed patch notes to the user along with: a count of changes by category, and any internal changes that were excluded (for review).

Ask: "May I write these patch notes to docs/patch-notes/[version].md?"

If yes, write the file to docs/patch-notes/[version].md, creating the directory if needed. Also write to production/releases/[version]/patch-notes.md as the internal archive copy.

Phase 7: Next Steps

Verdict: COMPLETE — patch notes generated and saved.

Run /release-checklist to verify all other release gates are met before publishing.
Share the patch notes draft with the community-manager for tone review before posting publicly.