Release Drafter for Automated Releases

[adamantmm]

We have introduced Release Drafter to automate release notes generation.
Where it started: #9

This allows all developers to maintain consistent, automated release drafts without manual work.

🧩 What is Release Drafter?

Release Drafter automatically:

• Collects merged pull requests (titles, labels, authors)
• Generates and updates a Draft Release
• Groups changes by categories (Features, Fixes, Tasks, etc.)
• Produces clean, standardized Markdown release notes

Useful for any repository: libraries, bots, services, node tools, utilities, and more.

🎯 Benefits

• Unified release format
• Fully automated release notes
• Zero manual editing
• Label-based categorization (feature, fix, chore, breaking, etc.). See Recommended labels for Issues and Discussions.
• Additional pr and issue title prefixes categorization ([Bug], [Feat], [Chore], etc.). See Recommended prefixes for Issue titles.
• Shared custom generator for clean and readable output

📂 Files Included

The system consists of two files:

Workflow

.github/workflows/custom-release-draft.yml
https://github.com/Adamant-im/.github/blob/feat/release-drafter/.github/workflows/custom-release-draft.yml

Release notes generator

.github/scripts/release-notes.js
https://github.com/Adamant-im/.github/blob/feat/release-drafter/.github/scripts/release-notes.js

🛠 How to Enable It in Your Repository

1. Add workflow file

Copy the workflow file into your repo.

Example:

name: Custom Release Draft

on:
  workflow_call:
    inputs:
      target_branch:
        required: false
        type: string
        default: master
  push:
    branches:
      - master
      - feat/release-drafter
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  release-draft:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout target repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Setup Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: 20

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm install @octokit/rest @octokit/graphql

      - name: Download release-notes.js
        run: |
          set -e
          mkdir -p .github/scripts
          echo "Trying to download release-notes.js from feat/release-drafter..."
          if ! curl -fsSL "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Adamant-im/.github/feat/release-drafter/.github/scripts/release-notes.js" -o .github/scripts/release-notes.js; then
            echo "feat/release-drafter not found, downloading from master..."
            curl -fsSL "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Adamant-im/.github/master/.github/scripts/release-notes.js" -o .github/scripts/release-notes.js
          fi

      - name: Run release notes script
        run: node .github/scripts/release-notes.js
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          GITHUB_REPOSITORY: ${{ github.repository }}

The workflow download and run the Release Drafter .github/scripts/release-notes.js.

2. Label and/or prefix your PRs

• Recommended labels for Issues and Discussions
• Recommended prefixes for Issue titles

Both will work well.

3. Check Releases tab

A Draft Release will be automatically updated after every merged PR.

🧐 Example

https://github.com/Adamant-im/adamant-im/releases/tag/untagged-63f36384c9a0593a4128

🤝 Recommendation

We encourage all developers to enable Release Drafter in their repositories.
This improves release quality, reduces manual work, and ensures consistency across the ecosystem.

If you need help setting it up — feel free to ask!

[adamant-al]

Great that it uses both Label-based categorization and pr and issue title prefixes categorization.