changesets

Record what consumers need to know after implementation and focused validation.

Workflow

1. Inspect the complete diff and identify directly affected published packages.
2. Classify impact across source types, runtime behavior, entrypoints, required services, lifecycle, and persisted or wire data.
3. Perform the breaking audit below.
4. Record either a reason no changeset is required or one coherent changeset. When required, read authoring.md.
5. Validate package names, frontmatter, bump policy, and consumer-facing text.

Do not include unrelated worktree changes.

Requirement

Create a changeset for observable runtime behavior changes, including bug fixes; exported value or public type changes; entrypoint or export-map changes; changes to required services, errors, ownership, defaults, or lifecycle; and persisted, serialization, protocol, or wire-format changes.

Tests-only changes, behavior-preserving internal refactors, documentation or JSDoc maintenance, and unpublished tooling normally do not need one. When unclear, inspect exports and consumer-visible declarations rather than inferring from source location.

Breaking Audit

A change is breaking when valid existing consumer code, configuration, or data must change to keep compiling or behaving according to the previous contract. Audit every surface:

• Names and locations: exports, entrypoints, compatibility exports, and module paths.
• Call compatibility: parameters, accepted inputs, overload resolution, generic parameters, and defaults.
• Result compatibility: return and error types, output narrowing, members, inference, and required services.
• Runtime contracts: defaults, failures, interruption, concurrency, ordering, resource lifetime, acquisition, cleanup, and mutation.
• Data compatibility: persisted schemas, encodings, database layouts, protocols, and wire formats.

Additive exports, optional parameters, and behavior-preserving implementations are normally non-breaking. A fix restoring the documented contract is normally non-breaking but still needs a changeset when its operational impact is consumer-visible. Verify representative existing calls when overload ordering, structural assignability, or inference makes compatibility uncertain. API diff output is mechanical evidence, not a semantic-version decision.

The task is complete when every affected surface and published package is accounted for and either the no-changeset decision is explicit or one coherent, valid changeset describes the consumer impact and migration for every break.