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How would you structure conventional commit messages in a Node.js project, and how do they enable automated changelog generation?

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Conventional Commits is a specification for structuring commit messages with a type prefix (feat, fix, docs, chore, BREAKING CHANGE, and others) followed by a concise description -- tooling like semantic-release or standard-version can parse this consistent format across a project's commit history to automatically determine the appropriate semver version bump and generate a categorized changelog, removing the need for manual, error-prone changelog maintenance.
feat: add support for refresh token rotation
fix: correct off-by-one error in pagination
docs: update README with new API examples
feat!: remove deprecated v1 authentication endpoints

BREAKING CHANGE: the /v1/auth endpoints have been removed; use /v2/auth instead
Real-world example A team adopts conventional commits and configures semantic-release in their CI pipeline, so merging a commit prefixed with 'fix:' automatically triggers a patch release with an auto-generated changelog entry, entirely removing a previously manual and often-forgotten release process step.

Common follow-ups: How does semantic-release determine whether to publish a patch, minor, or major version based on the commit history since the last release?;What happens if a team's commits don't consistently follow the convention -- does the automation simply fail silently?

npm & Packages;CI/CD Publishing & Deployment
All 15 Git & Project Management questions