{"id":"pm-release-notes-customers","audience":"product-managers","category":"writing-emails","track":"writing","technique":"audience","title":"Turn an engineering changelog into customer release notes","free":false,"task":"This month's release notes go in the in-app 'What's new' panel for small-business customers. You want at most 4 bullets, under 80 words, plain text, starting with the fix that drove the most support tickets. Customers shouldn't see ticket numbers, internal-only changes, engineering terms, or the feature that was rolled back.","materialLabel":"Engineering changelog (attached to your prompt automatically)","material":"Changelog - Ledgerly v4.12 (Nov 3)\n\n- LED-2291: Fixed invoice PDFs cutting off the last line item when an invoice had more than 20 lines. (Support: 212 tickets last month, our #1 issue.)\n- LED-2304: Refactored the tax-calc service to the new rates engine. No user-facing change.\n- LED-2310: Added \"Duplicate invoice\" button on the invoice page.\n- LED-2318: Recurring invoices can now be paused for up to 3 months instead of cancelled. (Support: 41 tickets asked for this.)\n- LED-2322: Calendar sync for payment due dates. UPDATE Nov 4: rolled back behind the feature flag after a timezone bug. Not live for customers.\n- LED-2325: Migrated nightly backups to new storage cluster.\n- LED-2330: Bank feed now refreshes every 4 hours instead of every 12.\n- LED-2331: Fixed flaky end-to-end test in the checkout suite.\n- LED-2335: Dashboard loads ~40% faster for accounts with 1,000+ invoices.\n\nNote from Priya (support): customers on the Starter plan keep asking about multi-currency. That's still not planned, please don't hint at it.","rules":[{"type":"maxBullets","max":4},{"type":"maxWords","max":80},{"type":"plainText"}],"mistakes":[{"title":"Saying 'write release notes'","why":"The AI turns every changelog line into a bullet, often with bold headings like 'New' and 'Fixed'.","fix":"Limit it: \"At most 4 bullets. Plain text, no headings.\"","checks":["maxBullets","plainText"]},{"title":"Trusting the AI to count words","why":"AI is bad at counting. Ask for a total word limit and it often lands over it.","fix":"Cap each bullet instead: \"each bullet one sentence under 15 words.\"","checks":["maxWords"]},{"title":"Not leading with what matters","why":"The AI follows the changelog order or puts new features first.","fix":"Add: \"Start with the invoice PDF fix, our biggest support issue.\"","checks":["r0"]},{"title":"Not saying who reads it","why":"The AI keeps ticket IDs and engineering words because it doesn't know customers will see it.","fix":"Add: \"For small-business customers. No ticket numbers, no technical terms.\"","checks":["r2"]},{"title":"Including what isn't live","why":"The rolled-back feature is still in the changelog, so the AI announces it.","fix":"Add: \"Skip anything internal-only or rolled back, and don't mention multi-currency.\"","checks":["r1"]}],"promptHints":[{"label":"Says who reads it","patterns":["customer","small.business","user-facing","what'?s new"]},{"label":"Limits the bullets","patterns":["\\b(4|four)\\b.{0,15}bullet","bullet.{0,20}\\b(4|four)\\b"]},{"label":"Puts the big fix first","patterns":["pdf","first","lead with","start with"]},{"label":"Leaves out internal items","patterns":["internal","rolled back","ticket (number|id)","no (jargon|technical)","calendar"]},{"label":"Sets a word limit","patterns":["\\d+\\s*words","word (limit|count)"]}],"hint":"A changelog is written for engineers. Tell the AI who will read the notes, what to cut, what goes first, and how short it must be.","rubricLabels":["The first bullet is the fix for invoice PDFs cutting off line items","Leaves out calendar sync (rolled back), internal-only changes (tax-calc refactor, backups migration, flaky test fix) and any mention of multi-currency","Contains no ticket numbers (like LED-2291) and no engineering terms (refactor, feature flag, service, migration, cluster, end-to-end test), and adds no intro line before the bullets"]}