Planet RoadmapRelease Notes Generator
Paste raw commits or bullet points on the left, get polished Markdown release notes on the right. Conventional-commit prefixes get stripped automatically, breaking changes get their own section, and you can switch tone or format with a click.
Anatomy of great release notes
- Lead with the whyStart with one sentence that captures the most important thing this release changes for the reader.
- Group by user impactWhat is new, what improved, what got fixed. Skip categories with nothing in them — empty sections are clutter.
- Write benefits"Faster checkout" beats "Optimized checkout query." Translate engineering changes into the user-visible outcome.
- Link to docsFor non-trivial features and especially breaking changes, link to a deeper reference. Release notes are the headline, not the manual.
- Keep an archivePublish to a permanent changelog page, not just an email. Customers, prospects, and investors all eventually want the history.
Frequently asked questions
What should release notes include?
Release notes work best when they group changes by what users care about: new features, improvements, bug fixes, and breaking changes. Lead with the headline that matters most. Write benefits, not features — "Dashboard loads 2x faster" beats "Refactored dashboard data layer." If you ship to developers, include API changes and migration steps inline.
Release notes vs changelog — what is the difference?
A changelog is the chronological, comprehensive record of every shipped change. Release notes are the user-facing version, polished and curated for each release. The changelog feeds the release notes — start by pulling commit messages, then rewrite them with the user in mind.
How do I turn commit messages into user-friendly notes?
Strip the conventional-commit prefixes (feat:, fix:, chore:) and rewrite each line as a benefit, not a code-level description. "feat(api): add cursor pagination" becomes "Cursor pagination on the items API for stable iteration." Group related commits — five small UI fixes can become one bullet "Polish across the dashboard." Cut anything that does not affect user experience.
How often should I publish release notes?
It depends on cadence. Weekly is a good default for SaaS products with continuous deployment — frequent enough that each post stays bite-sized, infrequent enough that users do not get notification fatigue. For mobile or downloaded software, tie release notes to versioned releases. The worst pattern is sporadic: users learn to ignore the channel.
How should I handle breaking changes?
Always call them out under a clearly-labelled Breaking Changes section. Include: what is changing, when it takes effect, what users need to do, and a link to migration docs. For developer tools, use the deprecation-then-removal pattern: announce the deprecation in one release, log warnings in the next, remove in a later one. Make it impossible for users to be surprised.
Public release notes vs internal release notes?
Public release notes go to customers — write them in benefit terms, omit internal-only changes, and keep them short. Internal release notes go to your support and sales teams — include the user-facing message, but also cover the rationale, what to say if customers ask, and any rollout caveats. The same release usually needs both, written separately.
Publish release notes that customers actually read
Planet Roadmap turns release notes into a permanent public changelog with subscriptions, RSS, and an in-app feed — so the work you ship reaches the customers who asked for it.
See the changelog tool