Generate release notes in 3 formats (CHANGELOG.md, PR body, Slack announcement) from git commits. Automatically categorizes changes and converts technical language to user-friendly messaging. Use for releases, changelogs, version notes, what's new summaries, or ship announcements.
58
67%
Does it follow best practices?
Impact
—
No eval scenarios have been run
Advisory
Suggest reviewing before use
Optimize this skill with Tessl
npx tessl skill review --optimize ./examples/skills/release-notes-generator/SKILL.mdQuality
Discovery
100%Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.
This is an excellent skill description that clearly communicates specific capabilities (3 output formats, change categorization, language conversion), provides rich natural trigger terms, and explicitly states when to use it. It uses proper third-person voice throughout and occupies a distinct niche that would be easy to differentiate from other skills.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Specificity | Lists multiple specific concrete actions: generating release notes in 3 named formats (CHANGELOG.md, PR body, Slack announcement), automatically categorizing changes, and converting technical language to user-friendly messaging. | 3 / 3 |
Completeness | Clearly answers both what (generate release notes in 3 formats, categorize changes, convert technical language) and when ('Use for releases, changelogs, version notes, what's new summaries, or ship announcements') with explicit trigger guidance. | 3 / 3 |
Trigger Term Quality | Excellent coverage of natural terms users would say: 'release notes', 'changelogs', 'version notes', 'what's new', 'ship announcements', 'CHANGELOG.md', 'PR body', 'Slack announcement'. These are terms users would naturally use when requesting this kind of output. | 3 / 3 |
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk | Highly distinctive niche combining git commits with release note generation in specific formats. The mention of CHANGELOG.md, PR body, and Slack announcement creates a clear, unique identity unlikely to conflict with general git or documentation skills. | 3 / 3 |
Total | 12 / 12 Passed |
Implementation
35%Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.
The skill covers a well-defined use case with clear output formats and useful transformation examples, but suffers from significant verbosity—content that belongs in reference files is inlined, the workflow is described redundantly, and decorative elements (ASCII boxes) consume tokens. Actionability is moderate: bash commands are provided but there's no complete executable implementation. The referenced bundle files don't exist, undermining the progressive disclosure structure.
Suggestions
Move the tech-to-product transformation table and commit categories table into the referenced files (references/tech-to-product-mappings.md and references/commit-categories.md) to reduce SKILL.md size by ~40%.
Remove the duplicate workflow description (it appears both in the 'Workflow' section and 'Workflow Integration' section) and consolidate into a single clear sequence.
Add error handling guidance: what to do when gh CLI is not authenticated, when no tags exist, or when commit parsing encounters unexpected formats.
Replace the ASCII box art migration alert with a simpler format description—Claude can generate formatted output without needing the exact character art template.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Conciseness | The skill is very verbose at ~200+ lines. It includes extensive formatting examples (ASCII box art for migration alerts), redundant sections (the workflow is described twice in different sections), and explanatory content that Claude doesn't need (e.g., explaining what conventional commit prefixes mean). The tech-to-product transformation table and commit categories table, while useful, could be in reference files. Much of this could be cut in half. | 1 / 3 |
Actionability | The skill provides concrete bash commands for git operations and gh CLI usage, plus clear output format templates. However, there's no executable script or complete code to actually perform the generation—it describes what to do rather than providing a runnable implementation. The 'How to Use' section shows natural language prompts rather than executable commands. | 2 / 3 |
Workflow Clarity | The workflow steps are listed clearly in sequence (analyze → fetch → categorize → generate → transform → alert), and migration detection includes a validation checkpoint. However, there's no explicit error handling or feedback loops—what happens if gh CLI fails, if tags don't exist, or if commit parsing fails? For a multi-step process involving external APIs and file writes, validation gaps are notable. | 2 / 3 |
Progressive Disclosure | The skill references external files (assets/changelog-template.md, references/tech-to-product-mappings.md, etc.) and related skills, which is good structure. However, no bundle files are provided, so these references are unverifiable. Additionally, substantial content that should be in those reference files (like the full tech-to-product mapping table and commit categories table) is inlined in the SKILL.md, bloating the main file. | 2 / 3 |
Total | 7 / 12 Passed |
Validation
90%Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.
Validation — 10 / 11 Passed
Validation for skill structure
| Criteria | Description | Result |
|---|---|---|
frontmatter_unknown_keys | Unknown frontmatter key(s) found; consider removing or moving to metadata | Warning |
Total | 10 / 11 Passed | |
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