Release Conductor

The release-chore co-pilot for Claude Code: it owns everything clustered around the diff, commit messages, PR descriptions, version bumps, changelogs, merge conflicts, rebase planning, and git-history archaeology.

Purpose

AI made code generation roughly 30% faster, but human review and release capacity stayed flat, the "review gap." The chores clustered around shipping are fragmented and high-frequency: writing PR descriptions, deciding major/minor/patch (humans get binary-compatibility right only about 60% of the time), assembling changelogs from non-conventional history, resolving merge conflicts (10-20% of developer time), and doing blame/bisect archaeology. Diff-review tools explicitly disown these tasks. Release Conductor owns exactly them, turning the messy, manual work between "code is written" and "code is shipped" into a guided, evidence-based workflow.

Features

• One-command ship prep: state detection, change summary, Conventional Commit drafts, semver recommendation, and a full PR description, all presented for approval, nothing executed.
• Conventional Commit authoring from staged changes, with correct type/scope/subject/body/footers.
• Release notes and changelog assembly that works even on non-conventional history by inferring change types from diffs.
• Behavioral (not just syntactic) breaking-change detection and a MAJOR/MINOR/PATCH recommendation with a confidence level and an evidence table.
• Intent-aware merge-conflict resolution that preserves both sides rather than blindly picking one.
• Safe interactive-rebase planning with an exact todo list and an explicit risk assessment, plan only, never executed.
• Git archaeology: pickaxe, blame, and bisect to answer why code exists, when it broke, and what introduced a behavior.
• Two reusable skills (changelog assembly, breaking-change detection) that the commands and agents share.

Installation

/plugin marketplace add clauderegistry/marketplace

/plugin install release-conductor@clauderegistry

Commands

/ship

/ship main

What it does:

• Detects VCS state (branch, upstream, ahead/behind, staged vs unstaged counts) and auto-detects the base branch when no argument is given.
• Summarizes the branch's change from the diff against the merge base.
• Drafts one or more Conventional Commit messages grouped by logical change.
• Dispatches the semver-advisor agent for a MAJOR/MINOR/PATCH recommendation.
• Drafts a PR description with Summary / Motivation / Changes / Testing / Breaking Changes / Screenshots and prints the exact commands to run.

Best for:

• The moment you finish a branch and want everything needed to open a PR.
• Teams standardizing commit and PR quality without a bot in CI.

/commit

/commit

What it does:

• Reads the staged diff (git diff --cached) and classifies the change type (feat/fix/docs/style/refactor/perf/test/build/ci/chore).
• Derives scope, an imperative subject <=50 chars, a body explaining the why, and footers (BREAKING CHANGE:, Closes #NN).
• Outputs a ready-to-paste message and the commit command; stops with git status if nothing is staged.

Best for:

• Writing a single clean Conventional Commit right before committing.
• Getting the "why" into history instead of a terse one-liner.

/release-notes

/release-notes v1.3.0..HEAD

What it does:

• Resolves the range (defaults to since the last tag via git describe --tags --abbrev=0).
• Classifies each commit into Keep a Changelog categories, inferring types from diffs when history isn't conventional.
• Calls out breaking changes at the top, links #NN references, and suggests the next version number.

Best for:

• Cutting a release from imperfect history.
• Maintaining a human-readable CHANGELOG.md.

/resolve-conflicts

/resolve-conflicts

What it does:

• Lists unmerged paths and orients OURS vs THEIRS (including the rebase inversion).
• Reconstructs each side's intent with git log/git blame/git show on both sides.
• Proposes a semantically merged resolution, applies it via Edit on approval, and sends you to the tests before continuing.

Best for:

• Conflicts where both sides made real, valuable changes.
• Avoiding the silent loss of one branch's work.

/rebase-plan

/rebase-plan main

What it does:

• Inventories base..HEAD commits and flags which are already pushed.
• Recommends a pick/reword/squash/fixup/drop todo for a clean, reviewable history.
• Outputs the exact git rebase -i todo content, a per-line rationale, and a risk assessment (force-push implications, merge commits, shared commits). Plan only.

Best for:

• Tidying a messy branch before review.
• Understanding the risk of a history rewrite before running it.

Agents

semver-advisor

Triggers when: you need a version bump decision, ask whether a change is breaking, or mention semver / major-minor-patch / backward compatibility; also dispatched by /ship.

What it does: Classifies a diff or commit range as MAJOR/MINOR/PATCH by reasoning about behavioral breaking changes (removed/renamed exports, changed signatures, changed defaults, stricter validation, changed output shapes/error types, removed config/env vars, DB/enum changes) across JS/TS, Python, Go, Java, C#, Rust, CLI, HTTP, and GraphQL. Returns a recommendation, a confidence level, an evidence table (change → classification → file:line), and a pre-1.0.0 note. Read-only (Read, Grep, Glob, Bash).

conflict-resolver

Triggers when: a merge or rebase produces conflicts, or you mention conflict markers / unmerged paths; also dispatched by /resolve-conflicts for multi-file conflicts.

What it does: Resolves conflicts by understanding both sides' intent via git log/git blame on OURS and THEIRS, then proposes semantically correct merges (keep both non-overlapping changes; reconcile overlapping logic; surface true contradictions). Reports per file what each side did, the merged resolution, and residual risks to verify with tests. Can apply approved edits (Read, Grep, Glob, Edit, Bash).

git-historian

Triggers when: you ask why code exists, when something broke, what introduced a behavior, or mention blame / bisect / pickaxe / regression.

What it does: Performs git archaeology with git log -S/-G (pickaxe), git blame for line provenance, and git bisect driven against a supplied repro to localize regressions, plus commit-message/PR mining for rationale. Returns a narrative timeline with SHAs, dates, and reasoning, and the exact offending commit for regressions. Read-only (Read, Grep, Glob, Bash).

Skills

changelog-assembly

Methodology to turn raw git history into human-readable changelogs: Keep a Changelog categories, inferring types from diffs for non-conventional history, de-duplication and folding, audience-appropriate phrasing, PR/issue linking, and the Unreleased section. Reference files: references/conventional-commits.md (the full Conventional Commits 1.0.0 taxonomy and semver mapping) and references/keep-a-changelog.md (the six categories, dated version headers, compare links, good vs bad entries).

breaking-change-detection

Methodology to reason about semver-relevant changes: a MAJOR/MINOR/PATCH decision matrix, public-surface detection, and behavioral vs syntactic breaks. Reference files: references/breaking-change-catalog.md (per-language and per-interface break signals for JS/TS, Python, Go, Java, Rust, HTTP/REST, GraphQL, database schema, and CLI) and references/semver-rules.md (SemVer 2.0.0 summary, pre-1.0.0 rules, deprecation policy, and communicating breaks).

Hooks

Release Conductor ships a single SessionStart hook that is advisory and non-blocking. When a session starts inside a git repository, it injects a one-line summary of the current branch, ahead/behind versus upstream, staged/unstaged file counts, and the last tag, and suggests running /ship or /release-notes. It only surfaces this suggestion as context, it never blocks a tool call, never modifies the repository, and never fails the session. Outside a git repository it is a silent no-op (fail-safe). Disable it any time via the /hooks menu or by removing the plugin.

Typical Workflow

1. Start a session in your repo, the SessionStart hook shows your branch, ahead/behind, and last tag, and suggests /ship.
2. Finish your feature branch, then run /ship main.
3. Review the change summary, the drafted Conventional Commit message(s), and the semver-advisor's bump recommendation with its evidence table.
4. Copy the PR description (Summary / Motivation / Changes / Testing / Breaking Changes / Screenshots) and run the printed commit and push commands yourself.
5. If merging main first surfaces conflicts, run /resolve-conflicts to reconcile both sides, then run your tests.
6. Before opening the PR, optionally run /rebase-plan main to tidy the branch history, and /release-notes to draft the changelog entry.
7. Later, when a regression appears, ask the git-historian to bisect it to the exact offending commit.

Plugin Structure

release-conductor/
├── .claude-plugin/
│   └── plugin.json
├── commands/
│   ├── ship.md
│   ├── commit.md
│   ├── release-notes.md
│   ├── resolve-conflicts.md
│   └── rebase-plan.md
├── agents/
│   ├── semver-advisor.md
│   ├── conflict-resolver.md
│   └── git-historian.md
├── skills/
│   ├── changelog-assembly/
│   │   ├── SKILL.md
│   │   └── references/
│   │       ├── conventional-commits.md
│   │       └── keep-a-changelog.md
│   └── breaking-change-detection/
│       ├── SKILL.md
│       └── references/
│           ├── breaking-change-catalog.md
│           └── semver-rules.md
└── README.md

Requirements

• Claude Code CLI
• Git (the commands and agents operate on a git repository)

License

MIT

Version

1.0.0

Release Conductor handles the chores between "code is written" and "code is shipped", so you can spend your review capacity on the code that matters.