GitHub Actions

communiqué integrates naturally into CI/CD pipelines. This guide covers the most common GitHub Actions patterns.

Prerequisites

Add your LLM provider secret to your repository (Settings > Secrets and variables > Actions):

Secret	Purpose
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	API key for Claude models
OPENAI_API_KEY	API key for OpenAI-compatible providers
GITHUB_TOKEN	PR and release access (provided automatically by Actions)

You only need one of ANTHROPIC_API_KEY or OPENAI_API_KEY, depending on which provider you use.

Basic: Update release on tag push

The simplest setup runs communiqué whenever you push a version tag:

name: Release Notes

on:
  push:
    tags:
      - v[0-9]+.*

permissions:
  contents: write

jobs:
  release-notes:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v6
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
      - uses: dtolnay/rust-toolchain@stable
      - run: cargo install communique
      - name: Generate release notes
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          # Use whichever provider you've configured:
          ANTHROPIC_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.ANTHROPIC_API_KEY }}
          # OPENAI_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.OPENAI_API_KEY }}
        run: communique generate "${{ github.ref_name }}" --github-release

fetch-depth: 0 is required so communiqué can read the full git history between tags.

With GitHub Copilot

Use Copilot with the built-in Actions token in an organization-owned repository. The organization must have Copilot access and enable Allow use of Copilot CLI billed to the organization, as described in GitHub's authentication guide. The permission is named copilot-requests: write (plural).

name: Copilot Release Notes

on:
  push:
    tags:
      - v[0-9]+.*

permissions: {}

concurrency:
  group: copilot-release-${{ github.ref }}
  cancel-in-progress: false

jobs:
  release-notes:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    timeout-minutes: 20
    permissions:
      contents: write
      pull-requests: read
      copilot-requests: write
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v6
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
          persist-credentials: false
      - uses: dtolnay/rust-toolchain@stable
      - run: cargo install communique --locked
      - name: Generate release notes with Copilot
        env:
          RELEASE_TAG: ${{ github.ref_name }}
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          OPENAI_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          OPENAI_BASE_URL: https://api.githubcopilot.com
        run: |
          communique generate "$RELEASE_TAG" --github-release \
            --provider openai --model gpt-4.1 \
            --header 'copilot-integration-id: copilot-developer-cli'

This sends the Actions token and Copilot integration header to the OpenAI-compatible Copilot endpoint, then publishes the generated release notes. Choose a model available to your organization's Copilot plan. Alternatively, replace --header with an environment variable:

OPENAI_CUSTOM_HEADERS: '{"copilot-integration-id":"copilot-developer-cli"}'

With release-plz

release-plz automates versioning, changelogs, and crate publishing. communiqué can enhance the release notes it creates.

Enhancing release notes

After release-plz creates a release, communiqué replaces the auto-generated notes with editorialized ones:

name: Release-plz

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: write
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v6
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
      - uses: dtolnay/rust-toolchain@stable
      - uses: Swatinem/rust-cache@v2
      - name: Run release-plz
        id: release-plz
        uses: release-plz/action@main
        with:
          command: release
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          CARGO_REGISTRY_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.CARGO_REGISTRY_TOKEN }}
      - name: Fetch new tags
        if: steps.release-plz.outputs.releases_created == 'true'
        run: git fetch --tags
      - name: Enhance release notes
        if: steps.release-plz.outputs.releases_created == 'true'
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          ANTHROPIC_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.ANTHROPIC_API_KEY }}
        run: |
          cargo install communique
          for tag in $(echo '${{ steps.release-plz.outputs.releases }}' | jq -r '.[].tag'); do
            communique generate "$tag" --github-release
          done

Note: The git fetch --tags step is required because release-plz creates tags via the GitHub API, so they're not present in the local checkout.

Release PRs and CHANGELOG.md

Let release-plz maintain the release PR description and CHANGELOG.md as commits land. Run Communiqué in the enhance-release job above after release-plz creates the release tag. This avoids paying to regenerate notes on every release PR update and then generating them again for the published release.

If you want AI-generated changelog entries before merging, run communique generate <TAG> --changelog explicitly when the release is ready for review. This invokes the LLM and updates the changelog; it should not run on every push to the release PR.

Dry run in PRs

Run communiqué in --dry-run mode on pull requests to preview release notes without publishing. This still invokes the LLM and incurs API charges on each run:

name: Preview Release Notes

on:
  pull_request:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  preview:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v6
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
      - uses: dtolnay/rust-toolchain@stable
      - run: cargo install communique
      - name: Preview release notes
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          ANTHROPIC_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.ANTHROPIC_API_KEY }}
        run: |
          TAG="v$(cargo metadata --format-version=1 --no-deps | jq -r '.packages[0].version')"
          communique generate "$TAG" --dry-run

Environment variables

Variable	Description
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	API key for Anthropic (Claude models)
OPENAI_API_KEY	API key for OpenAI-compatible providers
OPENAI_BASE_URL	Custom OpenAI-compatible API endpoint
OPENAI_CUSTOM_HEADERS	JSON object of HTTP headers; repeatable --header flags take precedence
GITHUB_TOKEN	Token for GitHub API access (PR details, releases)

The provider is auto-detected from the model name: claude-* models use Anthropic, everything else uses OpenAI-compatible endpoints.