semantic-release/semantic-release

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

24007 stars · 1811 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

semantic-release is a Node.js CLI tool that fully automates version management and package publishing. It determines the next semantic version from commit messages, generates release notes and changelogs, and publishes packages via CI pipelines, extensible through plugins for any package manager or language.

Use cases

• automate npm package releases from git commits
• generate changelogs and release notes automatically
• enforce semantic versioning based on commit conventions
• publish packages on CI after successful builds
• release to multiple distribution channels like npm dist-tags
• stop manually bumping version numbers

When to choose

• you follow conventional commit messages and want hands-off releases
• you publish packages to npm or other registries via CI
• you want consistent, emotion-free semver versioning
• you need automated changelog and release note generation

When to avoid

• your team does not follow a formalized commit message convention
• you need manual control over each release's version number
• your project is not published as a versioned package
• you cannot run releases in a CI environment

Facets

cli-tool · maturity stable

ci-cd deployment version-control developer-tools workflow-automation developer-tools version-control cli cloud semantic-versioning release-automation changelog-generation npm-publishing conventional-commits package-publishing devops automation nodejs docker

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markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="semantic-release/semantic-release")