# Recipe: save every release to onecell from GitHub Actions

A copy-paste prompt: your coding agent adds a GitHub Actions workflow that saves each published release to onecell as a draft, safely on reruns.

> [!info]
> **For:** a release owner or tech lead who wants a searchable history of what shipped without writing it up. **When:** once, in the repo; then every release. **Takes:** a few minutes to set up. **You get:** a draft in onecell for each release, tagged `src:github`, that search, agents and the Monday brief can find.

## The prompt

Paste it into your coding agent inside the repo. First create a **Drafts only** key on Settings → Agents and add it to the repo's secrets as `ONECELL_API_KEY`.

```text
Add a GitHub Actions workflow to this repo that saves every published
release to onecell. Follow https://onecell.io/p/automations.md exactly.

1. Create .github/workflows/release-to-onecell.yml, triggered on
   release: published. It reads ONECELL_API_KEY from secrets.

2. It calls create_document at https://onecell.io/api/mcp with:
   - cell: <cell>
   - slug: release-<tag>, lowercased, so a rerun gets slug_taken
     instead of a duplicate
   - title "Release <tag>: <release name>", a one-line summary
   - tags ["release", "src:github"]
   - the release body and a link to the release
   - dry_run: false
   The step fails only if the call fails and the slug is not taken.

3. Don't put the key in the file, and don't print it in logs.

4. Open a pull request with the workflow and tell me how to test it.
```

## What your agent does

1. Reads the guide
   The Automations guide, as Markdown, so the workflow matches what onecell expects.
2. Writes the workflow
   One job, one curl call, built with jq so release notes with quotes or newlines can't break it.
3. Makes reruns safe
   The slug comes from the tag, so a retried job does nothing instead of writing twice.
4. Opens a pull request
   You review the workflow like any other change.

## What you get

A release of Tally, a made-up invoicing app, saved by the workflow seconds after it was published. Someone linked it to the decision it carried out, then published it.

<!-- onecell:block {"type":"embed","documentId":"a10f96d3-2e3f-44a3-8d56-6a052757888b"} -->
[Sample release note: Tally v2.15.0, saved by GitHub Actions](https://onecell.io/p/sample-release-note-from-github)

## Variations

<details>
<summary>Every merge to main, not every release</summary>

Trigger on `push` to main and write one running changelog document instead: read it with `get_document`, add the merge at the top, and save with `update_document` and `expected_version`.

</details>

<details>
<summary>Deploys and incidents</summary>

Call the same step at the end of your deploy job, with a slug from the deploy id. On a failed deploy, write it to an *incidents* cell instead; it becomes the first draft of the postmortem.

</details>

<details>
<summary>Let an agent write the notes</summary>

Run Claude Code in the job with `-p` and the Repo snapshot recipe's prompt, so the release note groups changes by area and links the decisions it carried out.

</details>

## Tips

- One key per workflow, Drafts only. Revoke it and the workflow stops writing.
- The `src:github` tag lets anyone list what automation wrote, apart from people's notes.
- Keep secrets and customer data out of release notes; they will be searchable.

---

Part of [onecell recipes](https://onecell.io/help/recipes): copy-paste prompts for using onecell in your work.