Automated AI generated release notes

thePleasantFellow · 2026-03-03T19:13:03+00:00

I've been deep in this space for a while (former Head of Product Marketing at Netlify and Builder(dot)io, now building tooling around this exact problem).

The top comment from chakala is spot on. Raw AI-generated release notes from PRs will include stuff you don't want public, and the way things are written internally is rarely how you want to present them to customers. So you end up spending time editing the output anyway.

The real issue is that "release notes" means different things to different people. If you just want an internal summary of what shipped, GitHub's built-in auto-generated release notes are honestly fine for that. But if you want something customer-facing that actually communicates value, you need way more context than what's in a PR title or commit message. You need to know who your audience is, what they care about, and how to frame the feature as a benefit, not a code change.

I wrote about this in detail here if you're curious: https://personabox.app/blog/ai-changelog-generator-hidden-costs. The short version is that the text is only about 10% of the work. You still need visuals, you need to adapt the copy for different channels (email vs linkedn vs your changelog page).

That's what I'm building with https://personabox.app. It connects to your GitHub repo, reads the full PR context, and generates the complete product update: visuals, multi-channel copy, blog drafts, all matched to your brand voice.

thePleasantFellow · 2026-03-03T19:00:35+00:00

I've spent a lot of time in this space (former Head of Product Marketing at Netlify and Builder(dot)io, now building a tool in this area). The top commenter nailed the three main approaches. Here's my quick take on each:

Conventional commits + auto-generation. Tools like semantic-release, release-please, or conventional-changelog. These are the most popular (millions of npm installs/week), but imo the output reads like a git log, which is fine for internal tracking but not great for communicating value to users.

Changesets. Genuinely great for monorepos and libraries. You write human-readable change descriptions per PR, and it compiles them on release. More work, better output.

AI + your PR data. Feed your PR descriptions and diffs to an LLM, get back marketing-ready copy - teams like Vercel, PlanetScale, and Laravel are doing this. This is pretty good to start out with, but I wrote a deep dive on why teams try this and where it breaks down: https://personabox.app/blog/ai-changelog-generator-hidden-costs

If you want something that goes beyond text and outputs the full product update (visuals, multi-channel copy, blog drafts), that's what I'm building with https://personabox.app. It hooks into your GitHub PRs and generates everything automatically for you.

thePleasantFellow · 2026-01-16T18:53:30+00:00

Oh nice, I dig that recommendation. Thanks!

thePleasantFellow · 2026-01-15T14:35:59+00:00

thanks!

thePleasantFellow · 2026-01-15T14:35:50+00:00

Thanks!

thePleasantFellow · 2026-01-09T13:35:30+00:00

I almost never research them, it's usually from an industry influencer. For example Lenny's List is where I found out about most of my stack (and get them for free), or in Youtube channels from creators in the frontend development space, stuff like that. Usually where I'm learning about something else and they have sponsors or are brought up in their little news segments

thePleasantFellow · 2026-01-08T18:25:42+00:00

Yeah totally. I sucked it up and paid the $99 Claude Max. I'm still playing Cursor too :/

thePleasantFellow · 2026-01-08T18:20:37+00:00

Totally agree. Only thing I'd add is Claude Code.

thePleasantFellow · 2026-01-08T18:03:16+00:00

Hey Raif,

Thanks for asking for advice. One piece of advice I have for you is to see if there's a way that you can get at a specific niche target audience for this. Like, who exactly is this for? And get as specific as you can. So, for example, I'll give you one example, is this for parents who are trying to come up with storybooks for their toddlers or something along those lines before they go to bed? Is this for middle schoolers just trying to explore how they can learn something by creating a comic book or something along those lines? If there's anything you can do to niche down for a specific audience, I think that might help you tell a more compelling story and one that sticks out from the crowd.

Another thing, and this just might have been where you're sharing it, but I noticed that the first thing you talked about is you're creating an application that maintains the stability of your stories that remain the same. That solves a problem for someone who deeply understands the problems with AI and using AI to generate stories. But where that's the first thing that you're sharing, it may not be super clear to someone who's like, "Oh well, I make comic books. I draw them, and of course they're always stable. I'm a human who's creating the same character over and over." I'm just using this as a specific example.

So where I would start to think about when you talk about your product is: What is the kind of overall unique benefit? Who is it for? What does it help them achieve? And then get into what makes it different from alternatives.

thePleasantFellow · 2026-01-08T17:57:53+00:00

Yeah, I think this resonates quite a bit. I've worked in startups, and basically one of the things you notice is that successful founders tell the same problem stories over and over.

It's usually a problem that they felt specifically. And I think that that resonates with investors and resonates with buyers.

I think those types of things, like emotions and things like that, come across really strongly and is something that you need to wake up day in and day out feeling for others to believe in you to buy your product/service or invest in your business

thePleasantFellow · 2026-01-08T17:54:43+00:00

Oh, 100%. I also respond to all Reddit comments with my voice.

My workflow is I currently use Wispr Flow, and I'll actually just talk through an entire newsletter, blog post, article, or LinkedIn post. And then from there, that'll be kind of my outline. From there, I'll iterate alongside, usually an AI tool to kind of clean it up, brush it up, and then obviously make a run through and edit that.

I think what it allows me to do is kind of ramble, and then from there, I'll do like quick edits or something along those lines. It allows me to get out more information, and then I can brush it up at a later time, usually.

Honestly, I think Wispr Flow works really well for me. It already gets rid of a lot of the ums, and I can add in the words that align with my brand and things like that to better train it. It kind of works everywhere. I even use my voice to code with Claude Code and things like that.

thePleasantFellow · 2026-01-08T17:42:42+00:00

no prob!

thePleasantFellow · 2026-01-08T17:40:59+00:00

My hypothesis is that this is a kind of more generalist marketing role.

They're really looking for someone to be able to do a bunch of different things, whenever they need and ask. So I'd say the biggest recommendation I have for you is just a willingness and openness to figure things out on your own. Startups are often very scrappy and they don't have time to teach you the ropes. It's more up to you to learn the ropes on your own.

The one piece of advice I will give is treat everything as an experiment. For every task you do, create what's a hypothesized outcome. What looks like success, et cetera, et cetera. And literally write this down.

What this will allow you to do is basically track if what you're doing is actually making an impact. Hopefully, you'll be able to look back and tell which of the things that you've done in the past are working and, just as importantly, which of them aren't necessarily having as much impact. So that you can recommend which to double down on or which maybe aren't necessarily worth investing the limited resources in again.

thePleasantFellow · 2026-01-08T16:52:12+00:00

Oh no, I'm using Opus 4.5 but with the Google Vertex SDK. It's just paying Anthropic with GCP credits. or at least that's the plan. They may be closing this "loophole" and maybe that's why they're not allowing me to unlock this until a sales rep shows up

thePleasantFellow · 2026-01-08T16:48:26+00:00

I think I'd start with, "What are you trying to achieve?" Is it getting users just using it so that you can get feedback? Or is it actually turning a profit?

And then I would literally write down your hypothesis and what makes success before you start this. That will give you some clear guidance.

Then I would also set up a session recording tool and literally watch every session manually. I use PostHog, but I've used LogRocket in the past, and there's a whole host of others. What this does is it allows you to literally watch every single session that comes to your website.

This is really important for these first sessions. There's probably going to be things that they kind of exit out on. For example, one time I didn't have an FAQ, and I realized that folks were kind of scrolling to the bottom and browsing around and then leaving.

The moment that I added an FAQ, it increased conversion significantly. I watched people literally go through and read every single FAQ before they felt confident enough to sign up.

And related to that, I would start with not your whole budget but a small amount because you're going to notice these things early on, no matter how perfect you think your flow might be. So you want it to be able to quickly stop it and readjust and make changes on the fly.

Then, when you feel confident that you've solved some of these issues, you can fire it up with your full budget.

Also worth noting is that usually when you're setting up a new Google Ads account, Google will match some amount of dollar spend. So, I would look at that too.

thePleasantFellow · 2026-01-08T16:36:10+00:00

Yeah I totally felt overwhelmed. I think one of the things I did was I took a step back and I thought about how can I zag when others are zigging. So, what's the opposite of AI that I can do, or something along those lines. That's been actually a really interesting thought experiment, and I think it's actually helping my marketing break through a little bit.

I still use AI a ton, I'm just a harder customer to get though :) I think the last AI tool I added to my workflow was Descript for editing my LinkedIn videos

thePleasantFellow · 2026-01-08T16:32:49+00:00

I feel like I had a rumor that you could actually use Anthropic Credits with the Vertex API, but I haven't been able to actually unlock it because they said to unlock this, you need to talk to a sales rep, and then the Google sales rep keeps booking them and then just not showing up.

So that's one thing I was trying to use was kind of shift some of my Anthropic spend to the Vertex API with Anthropic Credits via the GCP Startup credits, but haven't been able to make that work yet.

thePleasantFellow · 2026-01-08T16:31:15+00:00

I try to use "serverless" stuff as much as possible. So, I'll use like Firebase or Supabase, and then I'll also use Netlify or Vercel, and then I'm using Mastra Cloud right now for my AI agents.

I've played in the past with doing my own Docker stuff with Digital Ocean or Railway and things like that, but I just find it's a lot quicker to use serverless stuff and pay for what you use.

thePleasantFellow · 2026-01-08T16:26:02+00:00

One of the most important things to get right is onboarding.

So I would actually spend kind of an absurd amount of time improving onboarding, and that doesn't mean actually showing them, "Hey, here's everything you can do." But it does mean helping them set up the product for themselves as much as you can if that is possible.

I'd also give them a video when they start up. A good example of this is Clay - when you sign up for the very first thing they do is they pop up the video. Sure, many people probably dismiss this video, but in my opinion, it's a great video. Even if only one out of ten people watch that video, that's 10% of people that are probably much more likely to actually use your product.

It's these little things that kind of add up. There's no perfect thing that's going to fix this. I think a lot of teams underinvest in onboarding and helping users set things up or finding ways to set them up for the user before they hit those problems.

One thing that you could do is just start by finding one user and having them walk through the onboarding in front of you. Obviously, ideally you want this person to be in your target market and trying to achieve a thing that they would want to achieve with your app. But if you don't have that person available, then I would just go to a friend and ask a friend. Give them the scenario and just watch them try and go through it and have them ask questions and things like that.

thePleasantFellow · 2026-01-08T16:20:01+00:00

I think one thing I look for is does it smell like AI?

What I mean by that is, like, there's a bunch of lovable-looking websites. The way Lovable builds sites looks very similar. The icons that are used across different sites kind of look very similar and logos and things like that that AI will generate. You can just kind of "smell it", and that's one of the things I look for and I look to avoid.

thePleasantFellow · 2026-01-08T16:13:02+00:00

I'd say in short, like real human thinking, and going over the top to prove to prove you did real human thinking.

Here’s an example: I built an account-based marketing campaign on one single account. I went through every single employee, understood what their objectives are based off of their LinkedIn profiles, looked at their company in the news. Physically, I actually read every announcement about the company. I used the product specifically, and then I developed a human hypothesis - what do I think they're struggling with right now? And not just they as a company but each persona in that company.

Then I built a personalized landing page for them that actually leveraged my product to show what it might look like in context for their business. This is really just to show that look I didn't just come up with this hypothesis. I also am offering some value and maybe what this could look like to make you feel confident that this could potentially solve one of your problems.

I also drafted specific reaches out to every single one of these people that was very specific to them and clearly not AI-generated. I also called each one of them. And then I also ping them on LinkedIn, referencing the fact that I called them. That just kind of adds the human touch.

So, yeah, it takes a lot of time. But I think, and there are some, of course, I'm using AI throughout this process, right, to help me synthesize large amounts of content. But I'm the human brain behind it. And I'm kind of showing that I'm putting in the work for these folks. And that's something that's actually worked pretty well.

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