Introduction

Derivative turns the changelog you already keep into a "What's new" widget for your app. It reads Changesets output, any CHANGELOG.md in the Keep a Changelog or conventional-changelog style, or your conventional commits and tags, and writes a static changelog.json. A small web component shows it behind a button with an unread badge.

There is no service behind it. The feed is a file you deploy with your app, the widget remembers what a reader has seen in localStorage, and nothing is sent anywhere. That makes it a fit where hosted tools such as Beamer or Headway are not: apps with strict privacy requirements, internal tools, and products that simply don't want another subscription and another cookie banner entry.

What you get

• derivative build: a CLI that writes changelog.json, and optionally an Atom feed and a standalone HTML changelog page.
• <derivative-widget>: a framework-free web component (about 6 kB gzipped) with a popover and an inline mode, keyboard support, dark mode and labels in English, German, French and Italian.
• @sweberdev/derivative-react: a <WhatsNew> component, a useChangelog hook for your own UI and an unstyled <ChangelogList>.
• Highlights: give a release a title, a short summary and an image without touching the generated entries.

How it fits together

CHANGELOG.md / git tags ──derivative build──▶ public/changelog.json ──▶ <derivative-widget>
                                         └──▶ public/changelog.xml (Atom)
                                         └──▶ public/changelog.html

Continue with Getting started.