AI integration

Normally, Beachball uses an interactive CLI prompt for generating change files. Since this doesn't work for AI agents, we provide a change file skill that guides AI agents through creating change files. The skill should be used automatically when you ask to generate a change file.

Installation

Plugin marketplace (Claude Code or Copilot CLI)

Add the beachball marketplace, then install the plugin:

# Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add microsoft/beachball
/plugin install beachball-change-file@beachball-plugins
# To update later:
/plugin marketplace update beachball-plugins

# Copilot CLI
copilot plugin marketplace add microsoft/beachball
copilot plugin install beachball-change-file@beachball-plugins
# To update later:
copilot plugin update beachball-change-file

Direct skill link

If you'd like to inspect or manually import the skill, you can view the skill markdown file directly.

How it works

The skill has instructions for checking which packages have changed and generating a change file with the appropriate type and comment based on each package's diffs (respecting settings such as disallowedChangeTypes).

The instructions direct the agent to create a change file manually, instead of using the CLI. This is because beachball change has the limitation that it can only accept a single --type and --message (applied to either all changed packages, or specific package(s) via --package). Using a single type and message for all packages is not ideal, and the downside of running multiple times with --package is that there would be a separate change file created each time.