This is an opinionated composite Github Action that implements a workflow based on the popular release-drafter action to automatically draft releases with release notes that are derived from PR descriptions as they are merged into the default branch.

Under default settings, auto-release will also cut a new release from the default branch after every merge into it. However, releases are not cut for merges of pull requests with a no-release label attached. In that case, the release notes are left as a draft and a release with all unreleased changes will be made the next time a pull request without the no-release label is merged into the default branch.

Usage

Add this action as a step in your workflow. It runs as per your configuration and automatically drafts or publishes a release based on merged pull requests.

- uses: step-security/github-action-auto-release@v1
  with:
    token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
    publish: "true"

The action reads its release-drafter config from .github/configs/draft-release.yml by default. You can override this with the config-name input.

Quick Start

1. Create a workflow file in your repo, e.g. .github/workflows/release.yml:

name: Release

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: write
      pull-requests: read
    steps:
      - uses: step-security/github-action-auto-release@v1
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          publish: "true"

2. Create a release-drafter config at .github/configs/draft-release.yml. Refer to the release-drafter configuration docs for available options.

Inputs

Name	Description	Default	Required
config-name	If your workflow requires multiple release-drafter configs it is helpful to override the config-name. The config should still be located inside .github as that's where we are looking for config files.	configs/draft-release.yml	false
latest	A string indicating whether the release being created or updated should be marked as latest.		false
prerelease	Boolean indicating whether this release should be a prerelease		false
publish	Whether to publish a new release immediately	false	false
summary-enabled	Enable github action summary.	true	false
token	Standard GitHub token (e.g., secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN)	${{ github.token }}	false

Outputs

Name	Description
body	The body of the drafted release.
exists	Tag exists so skip new release issue
html_url	The URL users can navigate to in order to view the release
id	The ID of the release that was created or updated.
major_version	The next major version number. For example, if the last tag or release was v1.2.3, the value would be v2.0.0.
minor_version	The next minor version number. For example, if the last tag or release was v1.2.3, the value would be v1.3.0.
name	The name of the release
patch_version	The next patch version number. For example, if the last tag or release was v1.2.3, the value would be v1.2.4.
resolved_version	The next resolved version number, based on GitHub labels.
tag_name	The name of the tag associated with the release.
upload_url	The URL for uploading assets to the release, which could be used by GitHub Actions for additional uses, for example the @actions/upload-release-asset GitHub Action.

References

• Release Drafter - Drafts your next release notes as pull requests are merged into master

For 🐛 bug reports & feature requests, please use the issue tracker.

License

Copyright © 2022-2026 Cloud Posse, LLC

Copyright 2026 StepSecurity

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE for details.