If you've ever had to write release notes by scrolling through git log, you know the drill: squinting at commit messages, manually sorting "fix" from "feat," and copy-pasting into a Markdown file by hand.

Here's a quick way to make that less painful using only git log.

Step 1: Get the raw commits between two tags 

git log v1.2.0..v1.3.0 --pretty=format:"%s"

This gives you every commit subject line between v1.2.0 and v1.3.0. You can also use two commit hashes instead of tags if you don't tag releases.

Step 2: Group by conventional commit prefix

If your commits follow a loose convention (feat:, fix:, chore:, docs:), you can split them out with a bit of shell:

git log v1.2.0..v1.3.0 --pretty=format:"%s" | grep "^feat" > features.txt git log v1.2.0..v1.3.0 --pretty=format:"%s" | grep "^fix" > fixes.txt git log v1.2.0..v1.3.0 --pretty=format:"%s" | grep "^chore" > chores.txt

Then concatenate them under headings:

## Features - feat: add dark mode toggle ## Fixes - fix: correct timezone offset in export

Step 3: Where this breaks down

This works fine for a handful of commits. It gets tedious once:

  • Commits don't follow the convention consistently
  • You have dozens of commits between tags
  • You want the same grouped Markdown format every release, without rebuilding the grep pipeline each time

That's the exact gap I built a small tool for.

My own product (it is mine and it is paid)

I made a Markdown Changelog Generator that reads the git log between two tags or commits and writes out grouped Markdown automatically, so you don't have to rebuild the grep-and-concatenate pipeline above every release.

It's 12 EUR: https://skeilster.gumroad.com/l/hdsfn