changelog-scanner

A simple command-line tool to fetch all commit messages since a given date across every repository in one or more GitHub organizations.

Perfect for maintainers who need to:

• Generate release notes across multiple repositories
• Audit activity across an organization
• Catch omissions in changelogs before publishing
• Review recent work across your projects

Installation

npm install -g @apostrophecms/changelog-scanner

Usage

First, set your GitHub personal access token:

export GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN=your_token_here

Then scan one or more organizations:

changelog-scanner orgname1 orgname2 orgname3 --since=2025-09-01

Example Output

⏳ Collecting repos for myorg
⏳ 25 repos found. Checking for more...
⏳ Found 25 repos for myorg
⏳ Checking commits for myorg/my-project
💁🏼‍♀️ myorg/my-project ***
Fixed bug in authentication handler
Jane Developer
jane@example.com
2025-09-15T14:23:45Z

Added support for new API endpoint
...

Options

--since=YYYY-MM-DD (required)

Fetch commits since this date.

changelog-scanner myorg --since=2025-09-01

--names (optional)

Print only the names of repos that have commits in the given period, one per line. Useful for piping into other tools or quickly seeing what changed.

changelog-scanner myorg --since=2025-09-01 --names

--branch=<branch-name> (optional)

Scan a specific branch across all repositories instead of each repo's default branch. Repositories that do not have the specified branch are silently skipped.

changelog-scanner myorg --since=2025-09-01 --branch=develop

--sort=<method> (optional)

Sort repositories by:

• created - When the repo was created (default, newest first)
• updated - Last updated (newest first)
• pushed - Last pushed (newest first)
• full_name - Alphabetically (A-Z)

changelog-scanner myorg --since=2025-09-01 --sort=full_name

Requirements

• Node.js 20 or higher
• A GitHub personal access token with repo scope access to the organizations you want to scan
• You can create a token here

About

Built with ❤️ by the team at ApostropheCMS to streamline our release process. If you find this useful, consider giving Apostrophe a star — it's an open-source CMS that helps teams build powerful Node.js applications.

License

MIT