Bumpy: zero-config monorepo releases powered by Git history

#javascript #monorepo #devops #opensource

Hi there!

Monorepo releases can be amazing… until the tooling feels either too heavy (extra metadata, intent files, complex flows) or too opinionated about how you should work. I wanted something lightweight that stays out of the way — especially if your Git history is already meaningful.

So I built Bumpy — a zero-config CLI for monorepo versioning that:

Auto-discovers packages (pnpm/npm workspaces, apps/*, packages/*)
Suggests the next version using Conventional Commits
Generates per-package changelogs from Git history
Uses per-project tags like project@version for precise release boundaries
Supports prereleases and --dry-run

Repo: https://github.com/antonreshetov/bumpy

Best fit: small/medium monorepos that already use Conventional Commits and want clean per-package changelogs + tags, without adopting a whole new workflow.

Why another release tool?

Tools like Changesets and Nx Release are excellent — they just optimize for different trade-offs than I needed:

Changesets: great, but it’s a file-based workflow (changeset “intent” markdown files that you commit and later assemble into releases).
Nx Release: powerful and well-integrated if you’re already in Nx; heavier if your repo isn’t.

Bumpy tries to keep the best parts (automation + safety) while keeping Git as the source of truth and avoiding extra ceremony.

How Bumpy works

At release time, Bumpy:

Scan: Finds packages in your workspace.
Locate: Detects the last tag for each package (e.g., project-a@1.2.3).
Analyze: Reads Git history since that tag.
Suggest: Recommends a bump based on Conventional Commits.
Generate: Creates/updates a package-level CHANGELOG.md.

You can always confirm the suggestion, choose a different bump type, or enter a custom version.

Quick Start

Installation

# Global
npm install -g @antonreshetov/bumpy

# Local (recommended for monorepos)
pnpm add -D @antonreshetov/bumpy

Common commands

Interactive release: bumpy
Status overview: bumpy status
Release one project (non-interactive): bumpy release project-a --type minor --yes
Dry-run: bumpy release --dry-run

Config is optional

By default, Bumpy uses your existing workspace layout. To customize behavior, run bumpy init to generate bumpy.json in the repo root.

{
  "projects": ["apps/*", "packages/*"],
  "release": {
    "ignore": ["apps/internal-tool"],
    "changelog": {
      "projectChangelogs": true,
      "workspaceChangelog": false
    },
    "git": {
      "commit": true,
      "tag": true,
      "push": true,
      "commitMessage": "chore(release): {tag}"
    }
  }
}