CHANGELOG.md is a community convention for a human-readable, Markdown-formatted file at the root of a project that records notable changes between versions. The leading specification is "Keep a Changelog" by Olivier Lacan, which defines a stable, opinionated set of section headings (Added, Changed, Deprecated, Removed, Fixed, Security) and recommends pairing with Semantic Versioning (SemVer). The format is widely adopted across open source and enterprise projects as the de facto way to document API and software releases in a way that is readable by humans and parseable by tooling.
URL: Visit APIs.json URL
- Type: Index
- Position: Producer
- Access: Open Source
- x-type: standard
- Change Log, Change Tracking, Documentation, Markdown, Open Source, Release Management, Semantic Versioning, Software Releases, Versioning
- Created: 2025-01-01
- Modified: 2026-04-23
CHANGELOG.md is a file format specification rather than a network API, so there are no runtime endpoints to document. Tooling and parsers work against the Markdown file directly.
- Website
- Specification 1.1.0
- Legacy Specification 1.0.0
- Documentation
- GitHub Repository
- Related Specification: Semantic Versioning
- License (CC BY 4.0)
Markdown-Formatted, Human-Readable, Machine-Parseable, Semantic Sections, Semantic Versioning Alignment, Date-Stamped Releases, Unreleased Section, Added Section, Changed Section, Deprecated Section, Removed Section, Fixed Section, Security Section, Reverse Chronological Order, Release Comparison Links
Open Source Project Release Notes, API Change Documentation, SDK Release Notes, Package Manager Metadata, Library Deprecation Tracking, Security Disclosure, Automated Release Tooling, Monorepo Component Changelogs, Regulatory / Compliance Change Records
keep-a-changelog gem, changelog-from-commits, changelog-parser (npm), git-changelog, conventional-changelog, release-please, changesets, towncrier
Semantic Versioning (SemVer), Conventional Commits, CommonMark, GitHub Flavored Markdown, SPDX
FN: Kin Lane
Email: kin@apievangelist.com