upgrade PR opened with no release notes: the repo kept its changelog in a .rst file the agent couldn't parse

TL;DR: Convert the .rst changelog to plain text before summarizing, then extract the section for the bumped version into the PR. The agent does not need a new parser, it needs a format conversion step: a converter turns reStructuredText into readable text in one command. After that the existing summarization path works unchanged.

the repo kept its changelog in a .rst file the agent couldn't parse

1. Fetch the changelog file (CHANGELOG.rst, CHANGES.rst, or similar) from the repo at the new version's tag.

Expected: the raw .rst file on disk, not an error or an empty extraction.

1. Convert it to plain text with a converter such as docutils or pandoc.

Expected: readable plain text with headings and bullet lists intact, directives rendered as text.

1. Find the section for the bumped version and summarize just that section.

Expected: release notes for exactly the new version, not the whole file.

1. Write those notes into the PR body.

Expected: the PR shows real release notes instead of "no release notes".

Use this when

• The agent "couldn't parse" a changelog in .rst format
• Release notes live in reStructuredText, AsciiDoc, or another non-Markdown markup
• An upgrade PR is missing notes even though the repo clearly keeps a changelog
• The extraction step returned empty on a markup changelog

Not for this skill when

• The changelog genuinely does not exist upstream
• Release notes live only in a Discourse thread or forum post
• The notes linked are for the wrong major version (tag-parsing off-by-one)
• The fetch itself failed (rate limit, timeout, auth)

Variant phrasings

• agent couldn't parse changelog rst
• release notes in restructuredtext format
• changelog format unsupported by the agent
• no release notes because the changelog is not markdown

Why it happens

Agent text pipelines assume Markdown. reStructuredText directives, roles, and field lists look like noise to a naive parser, so the extraction step returned nothing and the agent concluded there were no notes. The content was always there; the pipeline just had no conversion step for non-Markdown markup.

Edge cases

• Some .rst changelogs are enormous; convert first, then extract only the target version's section so the summarizer is not drowned.
• Sphinx-specific roles can render oddly in plain text; strip the leftovers rather than letting them pollute the PR body.
• If conversion fails entirely, fall back to the tagged release page for that version as the notes source.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_-w6z88ZkrHlFLUzfk1-3Gg