Verselicious 🍇

GitHub Action to automate semantic versioning with labels 🏷️

Add a major, minor, or patch label to a pull request and Verselicious will bump the version, create a git tag, and publish a GitHub release when the PR is merged.

Quick Start

# .github/workflows/release.yml
name: Release

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v6
      - uses: hopeman15/verselicious@v0.1.0
        with:
          github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

That's it. Label your PR with major, minor, or patch, merge it, and a release will be created automatically. The action detects the associated pull request from the merge commit automatically.

How It Works

1. Detects the pull request associated with the push commit
2. Reads the labels on that pull request
3. Determines the bump type (major, minor, or patch)
4. Finds the latest semver tag in the repository (defaults to 0.0.0 if none exist)
5. Bumps the version accordingly
6. Creates a GitHub release with the new tag and auto-generated release notes

If no pull request is found or no versioning label is present, the action logs a message and exits without creating a release.

Inputs

Input	Description	Required	Default
github_token	GitHub token for API access. Use a PAT if tag creation needs to trigger downstream workflows.	Yes	—
major_label	Label name that triggers a major version bump.	No	major
minor_label	Label name that triggers a minor version bump.	No	minor
patch_label	Label name that triggers a patch version bump.	No	patch
tag_prefix	Prefix for version tags (e.g., v to produce v1.0.0).	No	""
target_branch	Branch to target for the release.	No	main
generate_notes	Whether to auto-generate release notes.	No	true

Outputs

Output	Description	Example
new-version	The new version after bumping.	1.1.0
previous-version	The version before bumping.	1.0.0
tag	The full tag that was created.	v1.1.0
release-url	URL of the created GitHub release.	https://github.com/…/releases/tag/v1.1.0

Examples

Using a tag prefix

- uses: hopeman15/verselicious@v0
  with:
    github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    tag_prefix: 'v'

This produces tags like v1.0.0, v1.1.0, etc.

Custom label names

- uses: hopeman15/verselicious@v0
  with:
    github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    major_label: 'release: major'
    minor_label: 'release: minor'
    patch_label: 'release: patch'

Using outputs in subsequent steps

- uses: hopeman15/verselicious@v0
  id: version
  with:
    github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

- run: echo "Released ${{ steps.version.outputs.tag }}"

Triggering downstream workflows

The default GITHUB_TOKEN does not trigger other workflows when creating tags. If you need tag creation to kick off a downstream workflow (e.g., a publish pipeline), use a Personal Access Token (PAT) instead:

- uses: hopeman15/verselicious@v0
  with:
    github_token: ${{ secrets.PAT }}