The Changelog Tool

The Changelog Tool

The first plugin Forge ships with (bundled, free) — one tool on the platform, not a core feature. Give it a date window and a milestone; it produces a grounded release-post changelog for WordPress Core + Gutenberg.

Command

ai-forge changelog --since <YYYY-MM-DD> --until <YYYY-MM-DD> [options]

Flag	Effect
--since / --until	The date window (required).
--milestone x.y	Sets the Gutenberg branch to wp/<x.y> and enables milestone-aware ticket counting.
--post	Print a fill-in release-post template instead of the technical report.
--json	Structured data (for scripts / agents).
--deep	Enrich each Core change with its full Trac ticket description (needs the wordpress.org cookie — see Connectors).
--gb-branch <ref>	Override the Gutenberg branch.
--core-branch <ref>	Override the Core branch.
--no-labels	Skip fetching Gutenberg [Type] labels.
--no-dev-notes	Skip the dev-notes classification.

Run ai-forge -h for the full list.

Where the data comes from

Surface	Where changes live	Forge reads
Gutenberg	GitHub PRs on wp/<milestone>	commits + [Type] labels
Core	Trac tickets, committed to SVN	the WordPress/wordpress-develop git mirror
Core grouping	Trac ticket metadata	the docs-team dev-notes tracker JSON (joined on ticket #)

Core commit messages carry everything a release post needs — Fixes #NNNNN (the closed Trac ticket), Props alice, bob (contributors), and git-svn-id: …@62815 (the changeset r62815) — so the git mirror gives reliable counts and links without touching Trac. For component grouping, each windowed ticket is joined against the dev-notes tracker (already tagged with a component and dev-note / misc-dev-note / field-guide). Tickets not in the tracker — newer than its snapshot, excluded components, or version bumps — land under Uncategorized.

Everything the CLI needs is on GitHub: cookie-free, deterministic, runs in CI and Codex.

Output

• Default — a technical report: a summary table plus the changelog grouped by area.
• --post — a release-post template: headline, a count line, the two canonical source links (the Gutenberg compare view and the Core Trac query), a highlights placeholder, and the grouped changelog as raw material.
• --json — the full structured object: meta, report (with core.commits[].tickets, byComponent, contributors, counts), sources, markdown, post.

Deep mode

--deep fills each change's description. The cookie-free baseline uses the Core commit body; with the wordpress.org cookie set, Forge additionally pulls the Trac ticket description (via the mcp-context-wporg provider when available) so Uncategorized changesets get their real component and full text. Without the cookie it degrades to summaries and tells you so.

The grounding rule

Forge never invents features and never estimates counts. The numbers and links it prints are the source of truth. When you write the highlights (1–3 short paragraphs), back every sentence with a real PR or Trac ticket and link it inline.