better-changelog

Better Changelog — Change Audit System

Status: Spec complete, building
URL: changelog.someshovels.com
Notion: Look up “Release log/Change log SaaS” in projects DB

What It Is

NOT just a changelog — it’s an audit system. Most tools optimize for “what’s new today”; this optimizes for “what changed when” (compliance/audit use case).

5-axis taxonomy: What (custom categories) × Why (reason) × Impact × Where (module) × When

Repos & Local

• Org repo: project-shovels/better_changelog
• Personal fork: Chaoticonomist/better_changelog (for Vercel)
• Local: /root/clawd/better_changelog/ and /tmp/better_changelog/

Tech Stack

• Next.js 16.0.7, TypeScript
• Turborepo monorepo
• Drizzle ORM
• PostgreSQL (Neon, AWS US East)
• Clerk auth
• Tailwind + shadcn/ui

Hosting

• Vercel (free tier, CLI deploy)
• Project: adams-projects-a157b046/web
• Deploy: cd apps/web && vercel deploy --prod --yes --token=$(cat /root/.vercel-token)

Related Notes

• changelog-competitors — Competitive analysis
• changelog-feature-spec — 79KB comprehensive spec
• changelog-product-vision — High-level vision
• changelog-testing-plan — Test strategy

Credentials

• DB credentials: /root/.changelog-env
• Vercel token: /root/.vercel-token
• Clerk: Production instance domain-locked to someshovels.com

Breadcrumbs

Notes for future sessions:

• Database uses TEXT IDs (not UUID), inserts need explicit id: randomUUID()
• Schema regenerated from actual DB structure (Drizzle definitions didn’t match)
• Table renamed: entries → changelog_entries
• Direct DB queries work better than external API calls (no Railway backend)
• Build with: npx next build in apps/web/
• Adam’s use case: embeddable widget for logged-in users, audience levels (public/auth/internal)