vendor/wheels/ does not ship CHANGELOG.md or release notes — consumers can't look up referenced PRs without leaving the codebase

[bpamiri]

Severity: docs / discoverability.

Surfaced by: titan Phase 2.4 (Wheels 4.0 upgrade), 2026-05-15.

Description

An upgrader reading _upgrade-docs/PLAN.md or the canonical 3.x→4.0 upgrade guide will encounter PR references like "introduced in #1930" or "per #1985". To understand what those PRs actually changed, they have to:

1. Leave their codebase
2. Navigate to github.com/wheels-dev/wheels/pull/
3. Read the PR description

vendor/wheels/ (the bundled framework checkout titan and other 4.0 apps ship) has no CHANGELOG.md, no RELEASE-NOTES.md, and no equivalent in-tree reference. The vendor/wheels/box.json only shows the version (e.g. 4.0.0-SNAPSHOT+1779) — not what's in it.

Suggested fix

Ship a CHANGELOG.md (or RELEASE-NOTES.md) inside vendor/wheels/ at release time. The Wheels 4.0 GA snapshot already has the full PR list — it just needs to land alongside the framework files. Ideally one entry per PR with a one-line summary and a link back to the GitHub URL.

Consumers doing offline / no-internet upgrade work would also benefit.

cc @bpamiri

[wheels-bot]

Wheels Bot — Triage

Classified as docs-request.

Docs scope

Ship a CHANGELOG.md (or RELEASE-NOTES.md) inside vendor/wheels/ so consumers reading 3.x→4.0 upgrade docs can look up referenced PRs (#1930, #1985, etc.) without leaving their codebase. Each entry should have a one-line summary and a link back to the GitHub PR URL. The Wheels 4.0 GA snapshot already has the full PR list, so the initial population is well-scoped — the open question is whether this should also be wired into the release process so future snapshots regenerate or append to it automatically.

Confidence: medium

The gap and target path are concrete, but the deliverable straddles docs vs. release-engineering (how it gets generated and kept current at snapshot/release time is a process decision, not a translation-of-code task).

<!-- wheels-bot:triage:2719 -->
<!-- wheels-bot:triage-class:docs-request -->
<!-- wheels-bot:docs-confidence:medium -->

[wheels-bot]

Wheels Bot — Docs proposed

Draft PR: #2722

Pages updated:

• web/sites/guides/src/content/docs/v4-0-1-snapshot/upgrading/changelog.mdx (new — "Reading the Changelog" guide)
• web/sites/guides/src/content/docs/v4-0-1-snapshot/upgrading/index.mdx (updated — Aside noting CHANGELOG.md is not in vendor/wheels/, new LinkCard)
• CHANGELOG.md (updated — [Unreleased] entry)

Screenshots needed: none

A human review is required before merge. Reviewer A and Reviewer B will weigh in shortly.