laurigates/changelog-review

Claude Code Changelog Review

When to Use This Skill

| Use this skill when... | Use another skill instead when... | |---|---| | Reviewing Claude Code releases for breaking changes that affect plugins | Distilling project session learnings into rules and recipes | | Discovering new Claude Code features that plugins can leverage | Use project-skill-scripts instead when auditing skills for script-extraction wins | | Tracking deprecations before they break installed plugins | Use project-continue instead when resuming feature work, not platform review |

Expertise for analyzing Claude Code changelog and identifying impacts on plugin development.

Core Purpose

Review Claude Code releases to:

• Identify breaking changes requiring plugin updates
• Discover new features plugins can leverage
• Track deprecations before they become problems
• Ensure plugins follow current best practices

Change Categories

High Impact (Action Required)

| Category | Example Changes | Action | |----------|----------------|--------| | Breaking changes | API changes, renamed tools | Update affected plugins immediately | | Security fixes | Permission vulnerabilities | Review and update permission rules | | Deprecations | Removed features/fields | Remove deprecated usage | | Hook changes | New events, schema changes | Update hooks-plugin |

Medium Impact (Review Recommended)

| Category | Example Changes | Action | |----------|----------------|--------| | New features | New tools, frontmatter fields | Consider plugin enhancements | | Permission updates | New wildcard patterns | Update permission documentation | | SDK changes | New callbacks, streaming | Update SDK-related skills | | MCP improvements | OAuth, server configs | Update agent-patterns-plugin |

Low Impact (Information Only)

| Category | Example Changes | Action | |----------|----------------|--------| | Bug fixes | UI improvements | Note in changelog | | Performance | Startup optimizations | No action needed | | IDE features | VS Code updates | No action needed |

Plugin Impact Matrix

Map changelog categories to plugins:

| Claude Code Area | Affected Plugins | |------------------|------------------| | Hooks | hooks-plugin, configure-plugin | | Skills/Commands | All plugins with skills/commands | | Agents | agents-plugin, agent-patterns-plugin | | MCP servers | agent-patterns-plugin | | Permissions | configure-plugin, hooks-plugin | | Git operations | git-plugin | | Testing tools | testing-plugin | | SDK changes | agent-patterns-plugin |

Version Tracking

Version state stored in .claude-code-version-check.json:

{
  "lastCheckedVersion": "2.1.7",
  "lastCheckedDate": "2026-01-14",
  "changelogUrl": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthropics/claude-code/main/CHANGELOG.md",
  "reviewedChanges": [
    {
      "version": "2.1.7",
      "date": "2026-01-14",
      "relevantChanges": [],
      "actionsRequired": []
    }
  ]
}

Analysis Process

Step 1: Fetch Current State

# Read last checked version
cat .claude-code-version-check.json | jq -r '.lastCheckedVersion'

Step 2: Fetch Changelog

Use WebFetch to get the current changelog from: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthropics/claude-code/main/CHANGELOG.md

Step 3: Identify New Versions

Compare fetched changelog versions against lastCheckedVersion. Extract all changes since that version.

Step 4: Categorize Changes

For each change, determine:

1. Impact level (high/medium/low)
2. Affected plugins
3. Required action

Step 5: Generate Report

Produce a report with:

• New versions found
• High-impact changes requiring immediate action
• Medium-impact changes worth reviewing
• Suggestions for plugin improvements

Step 6: Update Version Tracking

Update .claude-code-version-check.json with:

• New lastCheckedVersion
• New lastCheckedDate
• Summary of reviewed changes

Change Detection Patterns

Breaking Changes

Look for:

• "BREAKING" or "Breaking Change" headers
• "Removed" sections
• "Migrat" keywords
• "deprecated" becoming "removed"

Hook System Changes

Look for:

• "hook" mentions in features
• New hook events (SessionStart, SessionEnd, SubagentStart, etc.)
• Schema changes for hook input/output
• Permission decision updates

Skill/Command Changes

Look for:

• "skill" or "slash command" mentions
• Frontmatter field changes
• Discovery mechanism updates
• New fields like "context: fork"

Agent/Subagent Changes

Look for:

• "agent" or "subagent" mentions
• Task tool changes
• Agent configuration options
• New agent types

Permission Changes

Look for:

• "permission" mentions
• Wildcard pattern updates
• Security fixes
• Bash permission changes

Report Format

For the human-readable review report template (Summary / High-Impact / Medium-Impact / Action Items / Next Steps), see REFERENCE.md. The CI path opens a triage issue instead — see Automation Integration below.

Automation Integration

The .github/workflows/changelog-review.yml workflow runs this review weekly. It is a thin caller of the org reusable workflow laurigates/.github/.github/workflows/reusable-changelog-review.yml@main (issue #1304): the schedule, dispatch input, and repo-specific inputs (analyzer path, commit scope, rule-file sections, plugin list) live in the caller; the two-job pipeline (bash pre-check gate → opus triage) lives upstream. The analyzer script and its tests stay in this repo and are handed to the reusable workflow via its analyzer-script input, so the analysis logic remains reviewable and unit-tested here:

bash scripts/analyze-changelog.sh --excerpt <slice> --repo-dir . \
  --tracked <ver> --latest <ver>

The script (scripts/analyze-changelog.sh, tested by scripts/tests/test-analyze-changelog.sh) emits structured KEY=VALUE output and, beyond keyword counts, carries a deprecation/removal → plugin-code bridge: for any tool/setting/command named in a deprecation or BREAKING removal line, it greps this repo's skills/hooks/agents/rules and surfaces the files that still reference it as triage candidates. Two miss classes drive this:

• #1638 — a deprecated identifier (e.g. TaskOutput) that stayed referenced in a hook script because the old keyword map only ever pointed at .claude/rules/*.md. Caught by the deprecat|removed|renamed|unshipped forms.
• #1733 — a BREAKING tool removal phrased verb-after with a /-separated pair (BREAKING: TeamCreate/TeamDelete tools removed, 2.1.178) that the deprecation-grammar forms missed, leaving the agent-patterns-plugin:agent-teams skill referencing removed tools unflagged. Caught by the BREAKING-line extractor.

Reviewing the changelog is never doc-only. Every run treats updating rule docs and fixing plugin code that references a removed/renamed tool/setting/env-var as part of the same task — the ACTIONABLE_DEPRECATION candidates are the highest-priority section of the tracking issue, and a referenced removed identifier is a correctness bug (the skill would instruct Claude to call a tool that no longer exists), not just stale prose.

Workflow flow:

1. Run weekly on schedule
2. Fetch changelog and compare versions (skip-if-exists is drift-aware: an open but unactioned tracking issue no longer suppresses newer versions)
3. If new versions found: run the analyzer, open ONE tracking issue (highest priority = deprecated identifiers still referenced in our code), ratchet the version JSON via a tiny PR
4. Label issues appropriately

Agentic Optimizations

| Context | Command | |---------|---------| | Analyze a changelog slice (structured KEY=VALUE) | bash scripts/analyze-changelog.sh --excerpt <slice> --repo-dir . --tracked <ver> --latest <ver> | | Triage filter — code-compliance candidates only | … analyze-changelog.sh … \| grep -E '^(ACTIONABLE_DEPRECATION\|DEPRECATED_TOKENS)=' | | List the surfaced candidate files | … analyze-changelog.sh … \| sed -n '/^CANDIDATES:/,/^=== END/p' | | Roll-up status only | … analyze-changelog.sh … \| grep -E '^(STATUS\|ISSUE_COUNT)=' | | Run the analyzer regression tests | bash project-plugin/skills/changelog-review/scripts/tests/test-analyze-changelog.sh |

Quick Reference

Relevant Claude Code URLs

| Resource | URL | |----------|-----| | Changelog | https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthropics/claude-code/main/CHANGELOG.md | | Documentation | https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code | | GitHub | https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code |

Version Number Format

Claude Code uses semantic versioning: MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH

• MAJOR: Breaking changes
• MINOR: New features
• PATCH: Bug fixes

Issue Labels

| Label | Use For | |-------|---------| | changelog-review | All changelog-related issues | | breaking-change | Breaking changes requiring updates | | enhancement | New feature opportunities | | maintenance | General housekeeping |