# olivierlacan/keep-a-changelog

If you build software, keep a changelog.

Repository: https://github.com/olivierlacan/keep-a-changelog
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/keep-a-changelog
Homepage: http://keepachangelog.com
Language: Haml
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: changelog, versioning, release, tag, history, git, markdown
Last push: 2026-08-25T05:40:26+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 67/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4477, "days_push": 8, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 6679, forks 3545 (observed 2026-08-28T04:09:47.579098+00:00)

## What it is
Keep a Changelog is a specification and advocacy project that defines a standard, human-readable format for writing software changelogs in Markdown. The repository also generates the keepachangelog.com website, which documents the format and provides translations.

## Use cases
- write a changelog for my open source project
- standardize release notes format across repos
- stop dumping git logs into changelogs
- learn how to structure a CHANGELOG.md file
- adopt semantic versioning alongside a changelog convention

## When to choose
- you want a widely adopted, community-recognized changelog convention
- you need a template and guidelines for human-readable release notes
- you want to align changelogs with Semantic Versioning

## When to avoid
- you need a tool that automatically generates changelogs from commits
- you want machine-parsed machine-readable release metadata rather than a prose convention

## Facets
- artifact type: learning-resource
- maturity: active
- function: documentation, markdown, version-control
- domain: documentation, developer-tools, version-control
- platform: cli
- tags: changelog, semantic-versioning, release-notes, specification, static-site, web-server

## Member repositories
- olivierlacan/keep-a-changelog (main) score 67

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:47.579098+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:43:00.487148+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/olivierlacan/keep-a-changelog (fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:47.579098+00:00, sha 8d6512052dbc)
  - homepage: http://keepachangelog.com (fetched 2026-08-29T08:39:08.534641+00:00, sha 72e2a4abe908)
  - site_page: https://keepachangelog.com/en/1.1.0 (fetched 2026-08-29T08:39:08.537165+00:00, sha 3adc5e968d74)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.