Instruction file imported from lettucebo/Ci.Environment (.github/instructions/changelog-and-releases.instructions.md). Copyright stays with the author.

Changelog & release conventions

• Follows Keep a Changelog. New work goes under ## [Unreleased], grouped into ### Added / ### Fixed / ### Changed (a ### Documentation group is also used). Reference the PR number in each entry, e.g. ... (#46).
• Tags are lightweight and carry no v prefix — 1.0.0, 1.1.1, 1.2.0. The compare-link footer at the bottom of CHANGELOG.md also uses bare versions.

Release flow (established by #42 and #48)

1. On a release/<x.y.z> branch, promote ## [Unreleased] to ## [x.y.z] - YYYY-MM-DD and update the compare-link footer (add the new [x.y.z] link and repoint [Unreleased] to x.y.z...HEAD).
2. Open and squash-merge a docs: update CHANGELOG for release <x.y.z> PR into master.
3. On the resulting master commit, create the GitHub release — this creates the lightweight tag for you, so do not pre-create an annotated tag:

   gh release create <x.y.z> --target master --title "<x.y.z>" --notes-file <notes>.md --latest