release-radar

whats-new

A Claude Code plugin that cross-references release notes against your personal config to surface what actually matters to you.

Instead of reading through every changelog entry, /whats-new scans your ~/.claude/settings.json, hooks, rules, skills, commands, and plugins, then classifies each release note into:

• Impacts Your Config -- changes that directly affect something you have configured
• Recommendations -- new capabilities with a concrete intersection with your setup
• General -- everything else, summarized in one line

Each potential impact is then verified with concrete tool calls (grep, file checks, platform detection) before it lands in the final report. Items that the verification proves don't actually affect your config are demoted to General — so the "Impacts Your Config" section only contains things you've confirmed apply to your setup.

Install

Step 1: Add the marketplace

claude plugins marketplace add https://github.com/bradfeld/whats-new-plugin.git

Step 2: Install the plugin

claude plugins install whats-new

Then restart Claude Code to load the new command.

Usage

/whats-new                  Analyze all releases since last reviewed
/whats-new 2.1.83           Analyze a specific version
/whats-new ?                Show help

Since Last Review (default)

Running /whats-new with no arguments checks all releases since the last time you ran it. It tracks the last-reviewed version in ~/.claude/whats-new-last-version.txt.

On first run (no tracking file), it defaults to the last 5 releases.

Specific Version

Running /whats-new 2.1.83 analyzes just that version. This mode does not update the tracking file.

Evolve Config

In the default (since-last-review) mode, after the report /whats-new turns the actionable findings into concrete config edits. Every candidate is independently fresh-eyes-reviewed before you see it — a separate reviewer vets each proposed edit (revising or flagging it), and the verdict is folded into the list. It then presents the vetted changes as a numbered list — each with the literal change, a plain-language explanation, and the review's verdict (clean / revised / ⚠ recommends-against) — and waits:

Reply with numbers to apply ("1 3"), "all", or "none".

Nothing is applied without your explicit pick. Every applied change is validated (jq / bash -n) and logged to ~/.claude/whats-new-applied.md — a cumulative record of how your config has evolved release-over-release. Specific-version runs are inspect-only and never modify config.

What It Scans

The plugin inventories your Claude Code configuration:

Config Type	Source
Hooks	settings.json hooks + ~/.claude/hooks/*.sh on disk
Env vars	settings.json env keys
Rules	~/.claude/rules/*.md + project .claude/rules/*.md
Skills	~/.claude/skills/ directories
Commands	~/.claude/commands/*.md + project .claude/commands/*.md
Plugins	settings.json enabledPlugins
Other settings	outputStyle, statusLine, permissions, etc.

It then cross-references this inventory against release notes fetched from the Claude Code GitHub releases.

License

MIT