agent couldn't find release notes because the project only publishes them in a Discourse thread, so it guessed from...

TL;DR: Do not guess from commit titles. Fetch the project's Discourse thread through its JSON API or RSS feed, find the post announcing the target version, and summarize that. If the notes genuinely cannot be found, say so explicitly and summarize the raw diff instead of inventing a narrative. A labeled "no notes found" beats a confident guess every time.

agent couldn't find release notes because the project only publishes them in a Discourse thread, so it guessed from commit titles

1. Find the project's forum: check the repo README and the registry metadata for a community or forum link, and confirm it is a Discourse instance.

Expected: a forum URL tied to the project, not a random thread.

1. Pull the announcement category through the forum's JSON API (append .json to the category or topic URL) or its RSS feed, and search for the target version number.

Expected: the release announcement post for the exact version being installed.

1. Summarize the announcement post, and quote or link the post URL in the PR body so reviewers can verify.

Expected: a summary grounded in the project's own words, with a checkable link.

1. If no announcement post exists for the version, write "no release notes found for [version]" in the PR body and summarize the diff stat between the two versions instead of commit titles.

Expected: an honest gap label plus facts, zero invented narrative.

1. Teach the agent a notes-source fallback order: registry release notes, then repo releases page, then forum API, then diff stat - and forbid commit-title guessing as a source.

Expected: future PRs either cite a real source or admit the gap.

Use this when

• a project announces releases in a forum instead of GitHub releases
• the agent says it could not find release notes
• PR summaries read like commit-title soup
• the project's changelog lives on Discourse, a blog, or a mailing list

Not for this skill when

• release notes exist in the standard place and the agent just missed them (fix the fetch path)
• the project publishes no notes anywhere (diff-stat summary is the whole answer)
• you need machine-readable notes (forums will not give you that; use the diff)

Variant phrasings

• "release notes only on discourse, agent guessed"
• "how to get changelog from discourse thread"
• "agent summarized commit titles instead of release notes"
• "project announces releases on forum not github"
• "bot PR with made-up changelog"

Why it happens

Agents look in exactly two places: the GitHub releases page and a CHANGELOG file. Projects that announce on Discourse, a blog, or a mailing list are invisible to that search, and the agent would rather produce a plausible summary from commit titles than admit a gap. Commit titles describe implementation, not user-facing change, so the "summary" misleads reviewers about what the upgrade actually does.

Edge cases

• Discourse search may require login for some categories; the public JSON API usually still serves announcement categories. If blocked, link the category and note the gap.
• Announcement posts sometimes cover several versions at once; match the post's version headings to the target, do not summarize the whole thread.
• Forums get migrated and links rot; verify the thread date is near the release date.
• Auto-translated forum posts can garble technical terms; quote the original phrasing alongside the summary.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pstq4FYTr3vut0q0MCJSzq6Q