Guide

Quickstart

Connect your GitHub repo and publish your first changelog entry in under 2 minutes.

OverviewSign inInstall GitHub AppConnect a repoHow generation worksReview a draftPublishYour changelog URL

Overview

Ollum watches your GitHub repository and automatically generates a human-readable changelog entry every time you push to your target branch. The AI batches your commits into one narrative, filters out housekeeping changes, and writes for your users — not for developers.

The flow: push → draft in ~30 s → review → publish → subscribers notified.

Sign in

Go to ollum.dev and click Sign in with GitHub. Ollum requests read access to your public profile and email address. No write permissions to your repositories are requested at this stage.

After signing in, you arrive at /connect — the repository connection screen.

Install the GitHub App

Ollum uses a GitHub App to receive push webhooks and read your repository content. You need to install it once.

  1. 1On the Connect screen, click Install GitHub App.
  2. 2GitHub opens the installation page. Choose whether to install on your personal account or an organization.
  3. 3Select which repositories to grant access to — you can grant access to all repos or specific ones. You can change this later in GitHub → Settings → Applications.
  4. 4GitHub redirects back to Ollum. Your accessible repositories are now listed.
Organization repos:If your organization requires admin approval for GitHub App installations, you will see a “Pending approval” banner until an org admin approves the request. The app will not receive webhooks until approved.

Connect a repository

Each Ollum project maps to one GitHub repository. From the Connect screen:

  1. 1Find your repository in the list. Use the search bar for large accounts.
  2. 2Click the repository row to create a project.
  3. 3Choose a target branch — only pushes to this branch will trigger changelog synthesis. The dropdown is populated from your repo's actual branches. Default is main.

You can connect more repositories later from the same Connect screen. Each becomes its own independent project with its own settings, drafts, and public changelog.

How generation works

Every push to your target branch triggers this pipeline:

  1. 1GitHub sends a push webhook to Ollum. Ollum acknowledges immediately (must respond in under 10 s).
  2. 2The push is queued as a background job. This keeps the pipeline reliable even under load.
  3. 3The job fetches all commits and merged pull requests since the last published changelog entry.
  4. 4Those commits and PRs are processed by the Ollum AI agent, which synthesises them into a single human-readable entry — filtering out housekeeping changes like dependency bumps and CI tweaks.
  5. 5The draft appears in your Drafts tab, typically within 30–60 seconds of the push.
  6. 6If you have configured a webhook URL in Settings → Integrations, Ollum sends a POST notification with the new draft.
Batching: Ollum accumulates commits until a meaningful amount of work has built up before generating — controlled by the Generation sensitivity setting. See Projects & Settings → AI synthesis. Small pushes like typo fixes may not immediately trigger a generation.

Review & edit a draft

Open a draft from Dashboard → Drafts. The entry editor gives you full control:

TitlePre-filled by AI. Edit freely — the title is what subscribers see in the email subject line.
BodyRich text editor (Markdown-based). Use the formatting toolbar for headers, bold, lists, and inline code.
Version labelOptional — e.g. v2.1.0. Shown on the public changelog entry.
TagsOptional labels like feature, fix, performance. Used for filtering on the public page and via the API.
Source commitsClick Source commits to see exactly which commits were used to generate this draft.
RewriteAsk Ollum to regenerate the entry. You can provide instructions to change the focus or tone.

Publish

When you are happy with the entry, click Publish. This immediately:

  1. 1Makes the entry live on your public changelog at /c/[slug].
  2. 2Sends a digest email to all subscribers.
  3. 3Moves the entry from Drafts to Published.
Auto-publish: Enable Auto-publish without review in Settings → Publishing to skip the review step entirely — drafts go live the moment they are generated. Useful for high-frequency shippers who trust the AI output.

Your public changelog URL

Your changelog is live at:

https://ollum.dev/c/your-slug

Share this URL with your users, embed it in your app footer, or link to it from your GitHub repo. On Indie and Pro plans you can point a custom domain at it — see Projects & Settings → Custom domain.

Subscribers can sign up for email notifications directly from the public page. Each time you publish a new entry, they receive a clean digest email.

Next: configure your project in detail — Projects & Settings →