PR Title Convention

We have very precise rules over how Pull Requests (to the master branch) must be formatted. This format basically follows the Angular Commit Message Convention. It leads to easier to read commit history and allows for automated generation of release notes:

A PR title consists of these elements:

<type>(<scope>): <summary>
  │       │          │
  │       │          └─⫸ Summary: In imperative present tense.
  |       |                        Capitalized
  |       |                        No period at the end.
  │       │
  │       └─⫸ Scope: API | benchmark | core | editor | * Node
  │
  └─⫸ Type: build | ci | docs | feat | fix | perf | refactor | test

PR title
- type
- scope (optional)
- summary
PR description
- body (optional)
- blank line
- footer (optional)

The structure looks like this:

Type

Must be one of the following:

type	description	appears in changelog
`feat`	A new feature	✅
`fix`	A bug fix	✅
`perf`	A code change that improves performance	✅
`test`	Adding missing tests or correcting existing tests	❌
`docs`	Documentation only changes	❌
`refactor`	A behavior-neutral code change that neither fixes a bug nor adds a feature	❌
`build`	Changes that affect the build system or external dependencies (TypeScript, Jest, pnpm, etc.)	❌
`ci`	Changes to CI configuration files and scripts (e.g. Github actions)	❌

BREAKING CHANGES (see Footer section below), will always appear in the changelog unless suffixed with no-changelog.

Scope (optional)

The scope should specify the place of the commit change as long as the commit clearly addresses one of the following supported scopes. (Otherwise, omit the scope!)

API - changes to the public API
benchmark - changes to the benchmark cli
core - changes to the core / private API / backend of n8n
editor - changes to the Editor UI
* Node - changes to a specific node or trigger node (”*” to be replaced with the node name, not its display name), e.g.
- mattermost → Mattermost Node
- microsoftToDo → Microsoft To Do Node
- n8n → n8n Node

Summary

The summary contains succinct description of the change:

use the imperative, present tense: "change" not "changed" nor "changes"
capitalize the first letter
no dot (.) at the end
do not include Linear ticket IDs etc. (e.g. N8N-1234)
suffix with “(no-changelog)” for commits / PRs that should not get mentioned in the changelog.

Body (optional)

Just as in the summary, use the imperative, present tense: "change" not "changed" nor "changes". The body should include the motivation for the change and contrast this with previous behavior.

Footer (optional)

The footer can contain information about breaking changes and deprecations and is also the place to reference GitHub issues, Linear tickets, and other PRs that this commit closes or is related to. For example:

BREAKING CHANGE: <breaking change summary>
<BLANK LINE>
<breaking change description + migration instructions>
<BLANK LINE>
<BLANK LINE>
Fixes #<issue number>

DEPRECATED: <what is deprecated>
<BLANK LINE>
<deprecation description + recommended update path>
<BLANK LINE>
<BLANK LINE>
Closes #<pr number>

A Breaking Change section should start with the phrase "BREAKING CHANGE: " followed by a summary of the breaking change, a blank line, and a detailed description of the breaking change that also includes migration instructions.

💡 A breaking change can additionally also be marked by adding a “!” to the header, right before the “:”, e.g. feat(editor)!: Remove support for dark mode

This makes locating breaking changes easier when just skimming through commit messages.

💡 The breaking changes must also be added to the packages/cli/BREAKING-CHANGES.md file located in the n8n repository.

Similarly, a Deprecation section should start with "DEPRECATED: " followed by a short description of what is deprecated, a blank line, and a detailed description of the deprecation that also mentions the recommended update path.

Revert commits

If the commit reverts a previous commit, it should begin with revert: , followed by the header of the reverted commit.

The content of the commit message body should contain:

information about the SHA of the commit being reverted in the following format: This reverts commit <SHA>,
a clear description of the reason for reverting the commit message.

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