SemVer from commits
Breaking changes bump major. Features bump minor. Fixes bump patch. No releasable signal means no noise.
brel release workflow
Release PRs from commits and config.
brel reads your Conventional Commits, bumps SemVer, updates files, generates changelogs, and opens the GitHub release PR. You review and merge. That's it.
~/my-project
$ git log --oneline -3
feat: add user authentication
fix: resolve race condition in worker
fix: correct validation error message
$ brel next-version
2.4.0
$ brel release-pr
Release PR prepared for tag v2.4.0.
$ # review → merge → tag ships automaticallyInstall
One line. Any platform.
Pick the package manager you already use. No Docker, no dashboards, no signup.
cargocargo install brel
brewbrew install better-releases/tap/brel
npxnpx brel@latest --help
Download binaryHow it works
Three steps to ship.
Write commits
Keep using Conventional Commits like you already do.feat: bumps minor,fix: bumps patch, and breaking changes — either! in the subject or BREAKING CHANGE:in the body — bump major. Everything else is ignored.
Run one command
brel release-prcomputes the next version, edits your files, generates the changelog, commits, and opens the release PR. Stale PRs are handled automatically.
Merge and ship
Review the generated changes in GitHub. Merge when ready. Enable tagging-on-merge and brel pushes the release tag for you.
Features
Everything you need. Nothing you don't.
Auto-generated changelogs
Plug in git-cliff or changelogen. brel runs the provider you already use against your own config and prepends to CHANGELOG.md.
Version files updated
JSON and TOML updates via exact path selectors. Nested keys, array indexes, package filters — all configured in brel.toml.
brel.toml
Small config. Explicit behavior.
Start with one file and grow into changelogs, tagging, branch patterns, and commit authors as your workflow matures.
brel.toml
# GitHub is the default provider.
provider = "github"
default_branch = "main"
[release_pr.version_updates]
"package.json" = ["version"]
"Cargo.toml" = ["package.version"]
[release_pr.changelog]
enabled = true
provider = "git-cliff"
output_file = "CHANGELOG.md"
[release_pr.tagging]
enabled = true
tag_template = "v{version}"Ship your next release today.
brel is free, open source, and runs entirely on your machine. No tokens resold. No dashboards. Just better releases.