GitHub Release Intelligence

Compare public GitHub release inventories and turn release additions, removals, note changes, asset changes, prerelease transitions, and semantic-version shifts into structured intelligence.

What It Analyzes

• Added and removed release tags.
• Release note changes with bounded added and removed terms.
• Breaking-change and security language in release notes.
• Added or removed release assets.
• Draft and prerelease status changes.
• Major, minor, patch, and prerelease semantic-version movement.

The parser accepts GitHub Releases API arrays, common JSON wrappers, and structured release records. A public github.com/owner/repository URL is converted to the corresponding GitHub Releases API endpoint before retrieval.

Input

Use targets for multiple repositories, or provide direct single-repository fields at the top level.

Field	Purpose
targets	Capped previous/current repository comparisons.
repo	Repository in owner/name form.
sourceUrl / urls	Public repository or Releases API URLs. Retrieval occurs only when fetchUrls is true and current data is absent.
previousSnapshot / currentSnapshot	GitHub release JSON.
previousReleases / currentReleases	Structured release objects.
records	Pre-paired records containing old and new release values.
includeDrafts	Include draft releases; false by default.
includeUnchanged	Include releases whose supported fields did not change.
includeReport	Write results, summary, and Markdown report records.
maxTargets	Repository cap, from 1 through 50.
maxReleasesPerTarget	Release cap per side, from 1 through 1,000.
maxItems	Dataset row cap.
maxTextBytes	Snapshot size cap, up to 2,000,000 bytes.

{
  "repo": "acme/widgets",
  "previousReleases": [
    {
      "tag_name": "1.9.0",
      "name": "Widgets 1.9",
      "body": "Adds export filters.",
      "draft": false,
      "prerelease": false,
      "assets": [{ "name": "widgets-linux-amd64.tar.gz" }]
    }
  ],
  "currentReleases": [
    {
      "tag_name": "2.0.0",
      "name": "Widgets 2.0",
      "body": "Breaking change: legacy authentication was removed. Includes a security fix.",
      "draft": false,
      "prerelease": false,
      "assets": [
        { "name": "widgets-linux-amd64.tar.gz" },
        { "name": "widgets-linux-arm64.tar.gz" }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "maxItems": 25,
  "includeReport": true
}

Dataset Rows

Each row identifies one release change or source diagnostic. Important fields include:

• repo, releaseKey, releaseTag, and releaseName.
• changeType, versionDirection, and semverJump.
• breakingChangeFlag, securityFlag, draft, and prerelease.
• oldNotesHash, newNotesHash, addedNoteTerms, and removedNoteTerms.
• oldAssetNames, newAssetNames, oldArtifactCount, and newArtifactCount.
• Publication times, release URLs, severity, score, checked time, and recommendation.
• diagnosticCode and sourceError for blocked retrieval or an empty release parse.

Change types are release-added, release-removed, release-notes-changed, assets-changed, status-changed, details-changed, and unchanged.

Stored Artifacts

• Dataset: one row per release change, unchanged release, or diagnostic that passes configured filters and caps.
• GITHUB_RELEASE_INTELLIGENCE_RESULTS.json: emitted rows.
• GITHUB_RELEASE_INTELLIGENCE_SUMMARY.json: release, breaking-change, security, diagnostic, and charge-limit counts.
• GITHUB_RELEASE_INTELLIGENCE_REPORT.md: readable release change digest.

Usage Charges

The actor uses pay per event. Platform usage is included in these event prices.

Event	Price	When charged
actor-start	$0.02000	Once before paid work starts.
target-checked	$0.00650	Before each repository target is processed.
snapshot-compared	$0.00650	Before a successfully prepared release pair is compared.
change-detected	$0.01300	Before each changed release row is emitted.
digest-generated	$0.05000	Before JSON result and summary records are written.
executive-report-generated	$0.10000	Before the Markdown report is written.

If Apify reports that a charge was limited or only partly accepted, the actor stops before the corresponding paid output. Set includeReport to false when KVS report artifacts are not needed.

Public Tasks

Five capped task inputs cover major releases, breaking or security notes, asset changes, prerelease status, and a release digest. Each task uses concrete GitHub release objects and bounded output.

Retrieval Safety

• Only public http and https URLs are accepted.
• Credentials in URLs and redirects are rejected.
• Loopback, link-local, and private network destinations are blocked unless allowPrivateUrls is explicitly enabled for controlled testing.
• Response length, retained snapshot bytes, target count, release count, and request duration are bounded.
• Fetch failures and empty parses produce explicit diagnostic rows. Missing tags are not replaced with fictional versions.

Limitations

• The actor uses public GitHub endpoints and does not accept access tokens, so GitHub rate limits apply.
• Release notes are classified by explicit terms; the actor does not claim semantic understanding beyond the reported flags and term differences.
• Scheduling and baseline retention are managed by the caller. Pass prior Releases API data into each comparison.
• Commit history, pull requests, package registries, and private repositories are outside this actor's scope.