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Version: Next

Introduction

Cngpac is a highly configurable package release manager for npm. It handles the entire release lifecycle — from documenting individual changes to publishing a package and creating a GitHub release — all driven by a single config file.

The Problem​

Releasing packages involves many error-prone manual steps: deciding the next version, writing a changelog, bumping package.json, tagging, pushing, publishing,creating GitHub release and whole bunch other stuffs. Each step is a chance for mistakes, and coordinating them across CI is tedious to set up.

Existing Solutions​

Tools like Changesets popularized the idea of documenting changes as discrete files. However, they offer limited configurability — the changelog format, versioning strategy, and release pipeline are largely fixed. If your workflow doesn't fit the defaults, you're left patching around the tool rather than configuring it.

The Solution​

Cngpac builds on the same changenote-based philosophy but is designed for deep configuration from the ground up. Every stage of the release pipeline — changelog formatting, version calculation, publishing, and releasing — is pluggable and composable. Cngpac consumes changenotes to automatically:

  1. Calculate the correct semantic version bump
  2. Generate a rich changelog with commit links, PR references, and contributor attribution
  3. Update package.json
  4. Commit, tag, and push
  5. Publish to NPM
  6. Create GitHub release

The entire pipeline is composable through plugins — swap or extend any part to fit your workflow.

How It Works​

Cngpac splits the release process into two phases:

Development Phase (you do this)​

cngpac change       # Add a changenote describing your change
cngpac commit       # Commit the changenote with its title as the message
cngpac prepare release --push  # Prepare version → commit → push → trigger CI

CI Phase (automated)​

cngpac version --commit --tag --push --publish --release

This single command reads the prepared version, consumes all changenotes, bumps the package, generates the changelog, and runs all publisher and releaser plugins.

Next Steps​

  • Core Concepts — Learn about changenotes, the versioning pipeline, and the plugin architecture
  • Quick Start — Set up Cngpac in under a minute
  • CLI Reference — Full documentation of every command
  • Configuration — Configure plugins, formatters, and more