Claude Code Changelog Watcher

What does Claude Code Changelog Watcher do?

Claude Code Changelog Watcher turns the anthropics/claude-code repo into a structured "what's new" feed for Claude Code power users. It pulls every GitHub release, parses the release body and the raw CHANGELOG.md file, classifies each line (feat / fix / break / docs / chore / perf / refactor), tags mentions of hooks, skills, agents, slash commands, MCP, plugins, worktrees, and emits one JSON row per release. Run it once or schedule it to be the first person on your team to learn about new Claude Code capabilities — with full Apify API access, retries, and monitoring.

Built by Ian Mu as part of a 100-Apify-Actor portfolio. Companion repo: github.com/ianymu/claude-verify-before-stop — a Stop-hook that enforces "verify before stop" on Claude Code runs.

Why use Claude Code Changelog Watcher?

• Power users want to know the second a new hook type, slash command, or skill API ships — this Actor flags those topics automatically.
• Tool builders integrating with Claude Code need a structured signal of breaking changes; the breakingChanges count + isBreaking flag on each entry makes that trivial.
• Internal platform teams can pipe this into Slack/Discord/email and stop reading raw changelogs.
• Researchers / journalists can produce "what shipped this quarter" reports without scraping markdown by hand.
• Compared to a GitHub watch subscription, you get classification, topic tags, filterable date ranges, and dataset exports (CSV, Excel, JSON, HTML).

How to use Claude Code Changelog Watcher

1. Click Try for free to open the Actor.
2. Optionally set Since to an ISO date (2026-05-01) or version tag (v1.40.0).
3. Optionally narrow Filter by entry types — most users keep feat, fix, break, docs.
4. (Optional) Paste a GitHub token in GitHub token to raise the 60 req/h anonymous limit. The Actor still works without one.
5. Click Start. Most runs finish in seconds.
6. Open the Dataset tab and download / call via Apify API.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
since	string	30 days ago	ISO date (2026-05-01) or version tag (v1.40.0).
categoryFilter	array of strings	["feat","fix","break","docs"]	Only emit releases containing at least one entry of these types.
maxResults	integer	30	Max releases to emit.
includeChangelogFile	boolean	true	Also parse raw CHANGELOG.md to catch versions not yet tagged.
githubToken	string (secret)	none	Raises GitHub API rate limit.

Example input:

{
  "since": "2026-04-01",
  "categoryFilter": ["feat", "break"],
  "maxResults": 20,
  "includeChangelogFile": true
}

Output

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel.

{
  "version": "v1.42.0",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-18T17:30:00.000Z",
  "url": "https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/releases/tag/v1.42.0",
  "entries": [
    {
      "type": "feat",
      "text": "Added Stop hooks for verification before exit",
      "topics": ["hooks", "verification"],
      "isBreaking": false
    },
    {
      "type": "break",
      "text": "Slash command discovery now requires a manifest file",
      "topics": ["slash-commands"],
      "isBreaking": true
    }
  ],
  "totalEntries": 12,
  "breakingChanges": 2
}

Data table

Field	Type	Notes
version	string	e.g. v1.42.0.
publishedAt	ISO string	From GitHub release publish time.
url	string	GitHub release URL.
entries	array of objects	One per changelog bullet — see below.
entries[].type	string	feat, fix, break, docs, chore, perf, refactor, other.
entries[].text	string	Original bullet text.
entries[].topics	array of strings	hooks, skills, agents, slash-commands, mcp, plugins, worktrees, etc.
entries[].isBreaking	boolean	True if break type or text contains "breaking".
totalEntries	integer	Count of bullets in this release.
breakingChanges	integer	Count of breaking entries.

Pricing / Cost estimation

This Actor uses the GitHub REST API + a raw markdown fetch — no headless browser, no proxy. Typical runs touch fewer than 5 HTTP requests and finish in seconds, using <0.01 compute units per run. A daily schedule for a full year typically costs under a dollar of Apify platform credit. With an anonymous token you may hit the 60 req/h limit on burst usage — provide githubToken to remove that constraint.

Tips or Advanced options

• Pair with anthropic-blog-tracker for a complete Anthropic announcement feed (blog posts + Claude Code releases).
• Filter categoryFilter: ["break"] and schedule daily — get pinged only when something might break your workflow.
• Filter by topic downstream: in your Apify Dataset query, post-filter entries[].topics CONTAINS "hooks" to get a hook-specific feed.
• If you maintain a Claude Code plugin, run this with since=<your-last-release> to spot newly supported APIs.

FAQ, disclaimers, and support

• Is this affiliated with Anthropic? No. This Actor uses the public GitHub API and raw file fetch.
• Why are some releases missing entries? The Actor parses bullet lists. If a release body is a paragraph blob instead of bullets, entries may be empty and the release is skipped.
• Does it work without a token? Yes, but GitHub limits anonymous requests to 60/hour. Provide githubToken if you schedule frequent runs.
• Bug or feature request? Open an issue on the GitHub repo, or contact Ian Mu via github.com/ianymu. Custom variations (e.g. push to Postgres, classify with an LLM, send Slack diff) are available.
• Related: see anthropic-blog-tracker and github.com/ianymu/claude-verify-before-stop.