Add GitHub Release Notes Template

[willkill07]

Description

This PR adds a release.yml template for NAT as outlined in GitHub documentation: https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/releasing-projects-on-github/automatically-generated-release-notes

Closes

By Submitting this PR I confirm:

• I am familiar with the Contributing Guidelines.
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• When the PR is ready for review, new or existing tests cover these changes.
• When the PR is ready for review, the documentation is up to date with these changes.

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Chores
  • Enabled automated release notes with categorized sections: Breaking Changes 🚨, New Features ✨, Improvements 🔧, Bug Fixes 🐛, Documentation Updates 📝, and Other Changes.
  • Excludes entries authored by octocat, dependabot[bot], and dependabot-preview[bot] from changelog author lists.
  • Categorization is driven by PR labels; uncategorized items fall under Other Changes.
  • Applies to future releases generated by the release workflow.

[coderabbitai]

Walkthrough

Adds .github/release.yml to configure autogenerated release notes: excludes specific bot authors and defines six changelog categories mapped to labels for automatic release-note categorization.

Changes

Cohort / File(s)	Summary
Release notes configuration .github/release.yml	Adds changelog config: excludes authors octocat, dependabot[bot], dependabot-preview[bot]; defines categories and label mappings — Breaking Changes 🚨 (breaking), New Features ✨ (feature request), Improvements 🔧 (improvement), Bug Fixes 🐛 (bug), Documentation Updates 📝 (doc), Other Changes (*).

Estimated code review effort

🎯 1 (Trivial) | ⏱️ ~2 minutes

Suggested labels

doc

Pre-merge checks and finishing touches

✅ Passed checks (3 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title Check	✅ Passed	The title "Add GitHub Release Notes Template" is concise (33 characters), uses the imperative mood ("Add"), and clearly describes the primary change (adding a release notes configuration/template, .github/release.yml) in the PR; it also falls well under the ~72-character limit.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changes. Docstring coverage check skipped.

✨ Finishing touches

🧪 Generate unit tests

• Create PR with unit tests
• Post copyable unit tests in a comment

---

📜 Recent review details

Configuration used: Path: .coderabbit.yaml

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 49312d0 and 24d498f.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• .github/release.yml (1 hunks)

🚧 Files skipped from review as they are similar to previous changes (1)

• .github/release.yml

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[coderabbitai]

Actionable comments posted: 0

🧹 Nitpick comments (3)

.github/release.yml (3)

3-6: Don’t exclude Dependabot; instead, surface dependency bumps in a dedicated section.

Excluding dependabot* removes useful dependency updates from release notes. Prefer a Dependencies category and keep bots included.

 changelog:
   exclude:
     authors:
       - octocat
-      - dependabot[bot]
-      - dependabot-preview[bot]
   categories:
+    - title: Dependencies 📦
+      labels:
+        - dependencies
+        - "chore(deps)"
+        - dep
     - title: Other Changes
       labels:
         - "*"

Also applies to: 23-25

---

1-1: Process nits: fix PR “Closes” field and align with CHANGELOG policy.

• Add a real issue number to the “Closes” field before merge.
• Team norm reminder from learnings: if maintaining CHANGELOG.md manually, clarify whether autogenerated notes supplement or replace it to avoid divergence.

---

1-6: Optional: support a "skip-changelog" escape hatch — no matching label found

File: .github/release.yml (lines 1–6). Checked repo labels via gh API — only "skip-ci" exists; no "skip-changelog" or "no-changelog". If you want a label-driven escape hatch, create a 'skip-changelog' or 'no-changelog' label and add it under changelog.exclude.labels in .github/release.yml.

📜 Review details

Configuration used: Path: .coderabbit.yaml

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 3b3e9a2 and 49312d0.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• .github/release.yml (1 hunks)

🧰 Additional context used

🧠 Learnings (2)

📚 Learning: 2025-08-28T23:22:41.742Z

Learnt from: CR
PR: NVIDIA/NeMo-Agent-Toolkit#0
File: .cursor/rules/general.mdc:0-0
Timestamp: 2025-08-28T23:22:41.742Z
Learning: Applies to CHANGELOG.md : Add user‑visible changes to CHANGELOG.md under the appropriate section

Applied to files:

• .github/release.yml

📚 Learning: 2025-08-28T23:22:41.742Z

Learnt from: CR
PR: NVIDIA/NeMo-Agent-Toolkit#0
File: .cursor/rules/general.mdc:0-0
Timestamp: 2025-08-28T23:22:41.742Z
Learning: Applies to CHANGELOG.md : Do not change the content of CHANGELOG.md except to add user‑visible changes under the appropriate section

Applied to files:

• .github/release.yml

🔇 Additional comments (2)

.github/release.yml (2)

23-25: Catch‑all category is correctly configured.

labels: ["*"] ensures nothing is dropped. Good.

---

8-22: Label mappings validated — no changes required

All labels referenced in .github/release.yml (breaking, feature request, improvement, bug, doc) exist in the repository; release sections will not be empty.

[willkill07]

/merge