Changesets

Overview

Changesets is a versioning and changelog management tool focused on multi-package repositories. Contributors declare the semver impact of each change (major/minor/patch) via changeset files, then Changesets aggregates them to bump versions, update changelogs, and publish packages in a single coordinated release.

When to use: Monorepo versioning, automated changelog generation, coordinated multi-package releases, CI-driven publishing, prerelease/snapshot workflows.

When NOT to use: Single-file projects with no npm publishing, projects using commit-message-based versioning (semantic-release), manual version management without an npm registry, projects where a single maintainer controls all releases without PR collaboration.

How It Works

1. A contributor adds a changeset file declaring affected packages, bump types, and a summary
2. The changeset file is committed alongside the code change in the PR
3. When ready to release, changeset version consumes all pending changesets and updates versions and changelogs
4. changeset publish publishes the updated packages to npm and creates git tags
5. In CI, the official GitHub Action automates steps 3-4 via an auto-maintained "Version Packages" PR

Key Concepts