Personas

ReleaseRay generates a separate release note draft for each persona from the same merged PRs. One PR set, three audiences, three different documents. No manual rewriting.

The Three Default Personas

Every organization starts with three personas. They are available immediately after connecting a repository — no configuration required.

Engineer

The technical draft. Intended for your own development team, contractors, or API consumers who need to know what actually changed.

What it includes:

• Full changelog by category: Features, Enhancements, Bug Fixes, Performance, Security, Internal
• PR and issue numbers in parentheses at the end of each item
• API changes described as "old behavior → new behavior"
• Breaking changes surfaced first, with required migration steps
• Code examples in migration guides when API signatures or config formats changed

Example output for "Add OAuth2 support for SSO":

Breaking Changes

Session.scope is now string[] instead of string. If you were storing scopes as a space-delimited string, update your code: session.scope.split(' ') → no longer needed. (#245)

Features

Added OAuth2 2.0 authorization code flow with PKCE for SAML/OIDC providers. New required env vars: OAUTH_CLIENT_ID, OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET, OAUTH_ISSUER_URL. Callback URL: https://yourapp.com/auth/callback. (#245)

Internal / CSM

The business draft. Intended for customer success, sales, product management, and support — anyone who needs to explain what shipped to a customer without digging through PRs.

What it includes:

• Breaking changes first, with plain-language talking points for customer conversations
• Highlights of the most customer-relevant changes
• Customer impact framing ("What this means for your accounts")
• ROI and business value where available
• Talking points and objection handling for CSMs

Example output for "Add OAuth2 support for SSO":

Breaking Changes

Enterprise customers using session-based auth will need to re-authenticate after upgrading. Talking point: "This is a one-time step — after they log in again, everything works as before, plus they get SSO." Proactively reach out to accounts on Acme Corp's tier.

Features

Enterprise SSO is now live. Customers can log in with Google Workspace, Okta, and Azure AD. Top requested feature from three enterprise accounts. See the SSO Setup Guide for configuration steps.

Customer

The user-facing draft. Intended for end users in your hosted changelog, email announcements, or GitHub Releases. Plain language, benefit-first, no jargon.

What it includes:

• Breaking changes first, in plain language with a clear "action required" or "no action needed" statement
• New features described as user outcomes, not technical capabilities
• Bug fixes summarized without referencing internal systems
• Short sentences, active voice, "you" and "your"

Example output for "Add OAuth2 support for SSO":

Action Required

We updated how you sign in. If your company uses Google Workspace, Okta, or Azure AD, you can now log in with your work account. Ask your admin to enable it in Settings. Existing passwords still work if you prefer them.

What's New

Sign in with your company account. No new password. Just use your work email.

Why Breaking Changes Appear First (For All Personas)

A breaking change buried under "What's New" is a support ticket waiting to happen. ReleaseRay surfaces breaking changes at the top of every draft regardless of persona. The framing changes per audience — technical migration steps for engineers, CSM talking points for internal, plain-language action items for customers — but the priority never does.

Custom Personas

Available on Starter and above. Custom personas let you generate drafts for audiences beyond the three defaults: investors, IT administrators, a specific customer segment, a localized market, or any audience with a distinct communication style.

Creating a Custom Persona

1. Go to Settings → Personas
2. Click "New Persona"
3. Give it a name and description
4. Adjust the tone sliders:

5. Toggle content preferences: whether to include PR numbers, migration guides, and breaking change details
6. Optionally add Custom Instructions (up to 2,000 characters) to give the LLM free-form guidance: specific terminology to use, topics to avoid, or formatting preferences

Custom Instructions Examples

IT Admin persona:

Focus on security implications, compliance impact, and infrastructure changes.
Avoid developer workflow language. Use "system" instead of "repo" or "codebase".
Always include a rollback note if any configuration changes.

Investor Update persona:

Write in the style of a founder update email. Focus on velocity metrics,
major feature milestones, and customer-impacting fixes. Keep it to 3-4
bullet points total. No technical terminology.

Enterprise Customer (formal):

Formal register. Third-person voice ("The platform now supports...").
Include SLA impact for any bug fixes. Reference compliance frameworks
where relevant (SOC 2, GDPR).

Disabling Default Personas

If you don't want to generate one of the three default personas — for example, if your product is developer tooling and a plain-language customer draft isn't useful — you can disable any default persona from Settings → Personas → [Persona name] → Disable.

Disabled personas still appear in the UI but won't be generated by default. You can re-enable them at any time.

Generating Drafts for Specific Personas

When creating a release range, you can choose which personas to generate:

• Generate All — runs all enabled personas in parallel (fastest for publishing to multiple channels)
• Generate Single — runs one persona at a time (useful for previewing or when you only need one audience)

Custom personas are available in the same selector as the three defaults.

Editing Persona Drafts

Each draft is independent. Editing the engineer draft doesn't affect the customer draft. You can:

• Edit any draft inline using the markdown editor
• Use the inline AI toolbar to adjust tone, length, or formatting within a draft
• Publish each persona to a different channel (engineer draft → GitHub Releases; customer draft → hosted changelog + email)

See the Dashboard Guide for the full editing workflow.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I rename the default personas?

Not currently. You can create a custom persona with any name, or disable a default persona and replace it with a custom one.

Do custom personas affect billing?

Custom persona availability depends on your plan. Free plans are limited to the three default personas. Starter and above include custom personas. See pricing for details.

Can I use the same custom persona across multiple repositories?

Yes. Custom personas are scoped to your organization, not individual repositories. Any persona you create is available for all connected repos.

What happens if a PR has no description?

ReleaseRay uses the PR title as the source of truth. A descriptive PR title ("Add OAuth2 SSO support for enterprise customers") generates a useful draft. A vague title ("fix stuff") generates a vague draft. The best practice: write PR titles as if they're the first line of the release note.

Can I see persona output before publishing?

Yes. The draft editor shows each persona in a separate tab. You can review, edit, and approve each one independently before publishing to any channel.