whatchanged

Read the release notes for every outdated dependency, from the version you have to the latest one.

npx @arechi/whatchanged

Installed globally (npm i -g @arechi/whatchanged), the command is whatchanged.

Run it in a pnpm workspace. It reads pnpm -r outdated, finds each package's GitHub repo, and collects the notes for every version the upgrade passes through. Majors are listed first.

In a terminal it opens an interactive view:

| Key | List | Notes | | ----------------- | ----------------------------- | ----------------------------- | | ↑ ↓ / j k | move | scroll | | enter / → | read the notes | | | space / b | | page down / up | | n / p | | next / previous package | | g / G | first / last | top / bottom | | o | open the changes in a browser | open the changes in a browser | | esc / q | quit | back to the list |

Piped, or with --plain, it prints Markdown instead, ready to paste into a pull request:

npx @arechi/whatchanged --plain > notes.md
npx @arechi/whatchanged react vite     # only these packages
npx @arechi/whatchanged --cwd ../app   # another workspace

Where the notes come from

1. GitHub releases whose tag names a version in the range: v1.2.3, 1.2.3, [email protected], @scope/[email protected] or pkg-v1.2.3. In a monorepo whose tags name their packages, only the package's own tags count.
2. CHANGELOG.md, in the package's folder and then the repo root, sliced to the sections for the versions in range.
3. A link to the comparison, the changelog or the releases page, which o opens.

Packages that share a repo and an upgrade, like @orpc/client and @orpc/server, are read once and shown together.

GitHub token

Without a token GitHub allows 60 requests an hour, which a large workspace can run out of. whatchanged uses GITHUB_TOKEN or GH_TOKEN when set, and otherwise the token of a signed-in GitHub CLI (gh auth login). It needs no scopes: the notes it reads are public.

Limits

• pnpm only, for now. npm and yarn workspaces are next.
• Notes are read from GitHub only. For packages elsewhere it links the repository or the npm page.
• pnpm reports one version per package name, so when two workspace packages pin different versions of a dependency, only one upgrade is shown.

Development

pnpm install
pnpm test        # unit tests, no network
pnpm check       # oxlint, then oxfmt
pnpm typecheck
pnpm build       # bundles everything into dist/cli.mjs
node dist/cli.mjs --cwd test/e2e

Every user-facing change comes with a changeset (pnpm changeset). Merging to main opens a Release pull request, and merging that publishes to npm.

License

MIT