| name | whats-new |
| description | Draft a "What's New" community update for the Revel Discord covering changes across backend, frontend, and infra over a time window. Use when the user runs /whats-new or asks for a community changelog/release-roundup post for organizers (and the programmers in the room). |
| allowed-tools | Bash(git:*), Bash(gh:*), Bash(date:*), Bash(grep:*), Bash(ls:*), Bash(test:*), Read, Edit, Write, Glob, Grep |
What's New
Produces a Discord-ready "What's New" post for the Revel community and archives it on the
published docs site. Audience: mostly organizers, but programmers too — every item leads
with the organizer-facing benefit and carries a light technical detail (a flag, an endpoint, a
behavior change) for the developers reading along.
Three repos, all public, all siblings of the cwd (revel-backend):
| Repo | Path | Primary source |
|---|
| Backend | . (cwd) | CHANGELOG.md (rich, dated, user-facing prose) |
| Frontend | ../revel-frontend | CHANGELOG.md if present, else git/PR digging |
| Infra | ../infra | git/PR digging (no changelog) |
The frontend is adopting the backend's changelog process. Always check for
../revel-frontend/CHANGELOG.md first and use it changelog-first when it exists; only fall
back to git/PR digging for repos that have no changelog yet.
1. Parse the window
The argument is number + w|m (e.g. 1w, 2m, 6w). Default 1m if empty/unrecognized.
Compute the cutoff date (this is darwin/BSD date; for GNU use date -d "-2 months" +%F):
date -v-${N}${UNIT} +%F
date +%F
Keep the human label for the header: "Last month" (1m), "Last 2 weeks" (2w), etc.
2. Gather changes (changelog-first, dig only gaps)
Backend — primary, already curated prose:
grep -nE '^## \[' CHANGELOG.md
Read every ## [X.Y.Z] - DATE section with DATE >= cutoff, plus [Unreleased]. These bullets
are already user-facing — reuse their substance. Open a PR (gh pr view <n>) only when an
entry is too terse to translate for a community audience.
Frontend — changelog-first if present, else git/PR:
test -f ../revel-frontend/CHANGELOG.md && echo "use changelog" || echo "dig git/PRs"
git -C ../revel-frontend log --since="<cutoff>" --first-parent --merges --pretty='%h %s'
gh -R letsrevel/revel-frontend pr list --state merged --search "merged:>=<cutoff>" \
--limit 50 --json number,title,body,mergedAt
Infra — git/PR only:
git -C ../infra log --since="<cutoff>" --first-parent --merges --pretty='%h %s'
gh -R letsrevel/infra pr list --state merged --search "merged:>=<cutoff>" \
--limit 50 --json number,title,body,mergedAt
When a PR title is opaque, read its body for the user-facing description. Drop the noise:
pure CI/lint/test/dependency-bump/refactor commits unless they change observable behavior.
3. Compose — grouped by area
Group items into emoji-headed areas chosen from what's actually in the window. Suggested palette
(use only the ones that apply; invent others as needed):
## 🎟️ Events & Tickets## 💳 Payments, VAT & Reporting## 🔔 Notifications & Comms## 📋 Questionnaires & Polls## 🌍 Self-hosting & Infrastructure## 🛠️ Under the Hood (perf, security, developer-facing)
Per bullet: organizer benefit first, light tech detail inline. Example:
- Mark an event as open-ended when there's no fixed finish — the page shows "Ongoing"
instead of an end time (
is_open_ended flag, propagates to recurring series).
Rules:
- Discord markdown only:
##/### headers, **bold**, - bullets, `code`. No tables,
no collapsibles.
- Confident and community-friendly, concise, no marketing fluff.
- Don't surface internal refactors, secrets, or per-PR links in the body.
4. The changelog footer (REQUIRED on every edition page)
Every edition page must end with a footer linking the changelog(s) — include a repo only if it
has a changelog. mkdocs has no auto-link extension, so use markdown links:
**📋 Full changelogs:** [Backend](https://github.com/letsrevel/revel-backend/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md) · [Frontend](https://github.com/letsrevel/revel-frontend/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md)
Only list Frontend once ../revel-frontend/CHANGELOG.md exists; add Infra if/when it gets one.
5. Deliver
The published docs page is the canonical artifact; the Discord message is a short teaser that
links to it.
a. Write a new edition page (one file per run):
docs/whats-new/<today>-last-<slug>.md, where <slug> is the window label kebab-cased —
1m→last-month, 2m→last-2-months, 1w→last-week, 2w→last-2-weeks. Example:
docs/whats-new/2026-06-22-last-month.md. Structure: # What's New — <date range> H1, the
area sections (##), then the §4 changelog footer.
b. Index it — prepend a bullet to docs/whats-new/index.md right after the
<!-- EDITIONS BELOW ... --> marker, newest first:
- [<date> — Last <window>](<filename-without-.md>.md) — <one-line teaser of the headline items>
Also add the edition to the left-sidebar nav in mkdocs.yml, under the What's New: section
right after whats-new/index.md (newest first, matching the ADR section's per-entry layout):
- What's New:
- whats-new/index.md
- whats-new/<filename>.md
c. Print the Discord message in chat, inside a fenced block so it's copy-pasteable — a SHORT
teaser, not the full post: a punchy intro line, 4–6 headline bullets (the biggest items only),
and a link to the published edition page:
📖 Full update → https://docs.letsrevel.io/whats-new/<slug>/
(The <slug> is the filename without .md. The URL goes live when docs deploy — that's expected;
say so.) Keep it comfortably under Discord's 2000-char limit.
d. Do not commit (project rule: always ask first). Report the new file, the index update, and
print the Discord teaser, then offer to commit.
Notes
- The docs publish to https://docs.letsrevel.io under the "What's New" nav tab; each edition lives
at
https://docs.letsrevel.io/whats-new/<slug>/.
- The edition page carries the full detail; the Discord teaser only summarizes and links to it.
