# Shipstar — Full Reference

> Automated product marketing for developers. Ship features, and Shipstar handles the marketing — changelogs, release notes, social posts, and more.

## What is Shipstar?

Shipstar is a developer tool that automates product marketing. It connects to your GitHub repositories and watches for changes — commits and merged PRs. When something ships, Shipstar analyzes the commit messages and PR descriptions to understand what changed, then generates and distributes marketing content across multiple channels.

The goal is to let engineering teams ship features without worrying about writing changelogs, composing social posts, or drafting release notes. Shipstar handles the marketing so developers can focus on building.

## How It Works

1. Connect your GitHub account and pick the repositories to track
2. Ship code — push commits and merge PRs
3. Shipstar analyzes the changes and generates contextual marketing content
4. Review drafts or auto-publish to configured channels

## Features

### Content Generation
- **Changelogs**: Automated changelog entries from commits and PRs
- **Release Notes**: Generated from your GitHub activity
- **Blog Posts**: Long-form content generated from feature launches
- **Social Posts**: Twitter/X and LinkedIn posts tailored to each platform
- **Newsletter Digests**: Periodic email summaries of product updates
- **RSS Feed**: Machine-readable feed of all updates

### Customization
- **Content Guidelines**: Pick a technical-depth preset per project — technical (APIs, config keys, migration notes), business (plain-language outcomes, no code identifiers), or mixed — and add free-text instructions such as "don't mention marketing website changes" or house-style rules; applied to every content type
- **Per-run overrides**: Adjust technical depth and instructions for a single run when you regenerate a draft, on a schedule, or via the `audience` / `instructions` arguments on every MCP generation tool
- **Company profile**: Describe your product, ideal customer profile, and pain points (or analyze your website) so blog posts, changelogs, and release emails speak to the right reader
- **Draft Review**: Review and edit before publishing, or auto-publish trusted channels

### Publishing Channels
- Hosted changelog page & embeddable widget
- X / Twitter
- LinkedIn
- Blog posts & knowledge base articles
- Email newsletters & release emails (project mailing lists, changelog subscribers)
- RSS feeds
- Slack
- Intercom (two-way article sync)
- Custom webhooks

### Source Integrations
- GitHub (live)
- GitLab (coming soon)
- Bitbucket (coming soon)

### Analytics
- Dashboard for tracking content performance
- Usage analytics and API stats

## Pricing

- **Free Plan**: 1 project, 1,000 credits/month, changelog generation, Slack integration. No credit card required.
- **Solo Plan**: $25/month or $20/month billed annually. Up to 3 projects, 50,000 credits/month, unlimited repositories.
- **Team Plan**: $29/month per seat ($24 annually, 2-seat minimum). Unlimited projects, pooled credits, team-wide content review.
- **Free Trial**: Solo and Team include a 14-day free trial with full access. Add a payment method to start — no charge until the trial ends.
- **Cancellation**: Keep access through end of billing period. Published content stays live. Export data anytime.

### Solo Plan Includes
- Unlimited repositories
- Changelog generation
- Release notes (GitHub)
- X / Twitter auto-posts
- LinkedIn auto-posts
- Blog post generation
- Newsletter digests
- Content guidelines (technical-depth preset + custom instructions)
- Analytics dashboard
- RSS feed output
- Priority support

## FAQ

### How does Shipstar generate content from my code?
Shipstar connects to your GitHub account and tracks the repositories you select. When you push commits or merge PRs, it analyzes the commit messages and PR descriptions to understand what changed. The AI then generates contextual marketing content — changelogs, release notes, social posts — tailored to your audience and brand voice.

### Can I review content before it's published?
Yes. By default, Shipstar generates drafts for review. You can configure auto-publish for channels you trust (like changelogs and release notes) and keep manual approval for social posts. Every piece of content can be edited before publishing.

### What repositories and platforms are supported?
Shipstar supports GitHub as a source today, with GitLab and Bitbucket coming soon. For publishing: a hosted changelog page with an embeddable widget, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, blogs, email newsletters and release emails, RSS feeds, Slack, Intercom, and custom webhooks.

### Is there a free trial?
Yes. Solo and Team plans include a 14-day free trial with full access to all features. Add a payment method to start your trial — no charge until the trial ends, cancel anytime. There is also a permanent Free plan (1 project, 1,000 credits/month) with no credit card required.

### How does Shipstar compare to other changelog and release-notes tools?
Shipstar generates content from your Git activity (commits and PRs) rather than starting from a blank editor, and covers more formats than changelog-only tools: release notes, X/LinkedIn posts, blog posts, and newsletters, published from one approval. Detailed comparisons against ReleaseNotes.io, LaunchNotes, Beamer, AnnounceKit, Noticeable, Olvy, ChangelogAI, and GitHub Releases are at https://shipstar.ai/compare.

### Can I customize the tone and style of generated content?
Yes. Content guidelines let you choose a technical depth (technical, business, or mixed) and write free-text instructions — what to leave out (e.g. marketing-site changes in a monorepo), tone, and terminology — once per project; they apply to every content type and can be overridden for a single run from the dashboard, a schedule, or any MCP generation tool. Details: https://docs.shipstar.ai/guides/content-guidelines

### What happens if I cancel my subscription?
You keep access through the end of your billing period. Published content stays live on all channels. Export all data anytime before canceling.

## Comparisons

Side-by-side comparisons of Shipstar and other changelog / release communication tools, covering features, pricing, and fit:

- Compare index: https://shipstar.ai/compare
- Shipstar vs ReleaseNotes.io: https://shipstar.ai/compare/shipstar-vs-releasenotes
- Shipstar vs LaunchNotes: https://shipstar.ai/compare/shipstar-vs-launchnotes
- Shipstar vs Beamer: https://shipstar.ai/compare/shipstar-vs-beamer
- Shipstar vs AnnounceKit: https://shipstar.ai/compare/shipstar-vs-announcekit
- Shipstar vs Noticeable: https://shipstar.ai/compare/shipstar-vs-noticeable
- Shipstar vs Olvy: https://shipstar.ai/compare/shipstar-vs-olvy
- Shipstar vs ChangelogAI: https://shipstar.ai/compare/shipstar-vs-changelog-ai
- Shipstar vs GitHub Releases: https://shipstar.ai/compare/shipstar-vs-github-releases

Head-to-head competitor comparisons (e.g. ReleaseNotes.io vs LaunchNotes, Beamer vs AnnounceKit) are linked from the compare index.

## When to use Shipstar (for agents)

Reach for Shipstar when the job is announcing or marketing shipped software work: the user merged, tagged, or released code and wants a changelog entry, release notes, a blog post, KB articles, a release email, or social posts about it. Generate with the matching generate_* MCP tool (generation runs from recent commits in the connected repo), then drive the draft through get_generation_status → get_content_draft → approve_content → publish_content (and send_release_email for mailing lists). For reading published content, use the list_*/get_* tools or the unauthenticated REST endpoints. Shipstar is not a general-purpose copywriter or social scheduler — it generates from real repository activity for a connected project; setup happens at https://app.shipstar.ai. Installable agent skills: https://app.shipstar.ai/agent-skills/manifest.json

## MCP Server (for agents)

Shipstar exposes its full pipeline over MCP at https://mcp.shipstar.ai/mcp (streamable HTTP). Authentication: OAuth 2.1 with dynamic client registration (RFC 7591), PKCE S256, and per-project consent — or a dashboard API token as a bearer token for scripts and CI. Discovery metadata (RFC 8414 / RFC 9728) is served at the mcp.shipstar.ai domain root.

23 tools in four groups:
- Content reads: list/get published changelogs, blog posts, and knowledge base article sets
- Generation: kick off changelogs, blog posts (and idea brainstorms), feature pages, KB articles, release notes emails, X threads, and LinkedIn posts from recent commits
- Lifecycle: poll generation status, read and revise drafts, approve, publish
- Delivery: inspect project context, destinations, and mailing lists; send release notes emails

Machine-readable declaration: https://shipstar.ai/.well-known/mcp.json
MCP docs: https://docs.shipstar.ai/mcp/overview
REST OpenAPI spec: https://shipstar.ai/openapi.json

## Developer resources

- Developer hub: https://shipstar.ai/developers
- API reference: https://docs.shipstar.ai/api-reference/overview (REST base URL https://api.shipstar.ai/api/v1; standard RateLimit-* response headers, Retry-After on 429)
- OpenAPI spec: https://shipstar.ai/openapi.json
- Authentication guide: https://docs.shipstar.ai/guides/authentication
- Versioning & deprecation policy: https://docs.shipstar.ai/api-reference/versioning
- Claude Code plugin: /plugin marketplace add turbo-labs/shipstar-plugin, then /plugin install shipstar@shipstar
- Embeddable changelog widget: https://shipstar.ai/embed.js

## Links

- Homepage: https://shipstar.ai
- About: https://shipstar.ai/about
- Pricing: https://shipstar.ai/pricing
- Compare Alternatives: https://shipstar.ai/compare
- Blog: https://shipstar.ai/blog
- Changelog: https://shipstar.ai/changelog
- Knowledge Base: https://shipstar.ai/knowledge-base
- Documentation: https://docs.shipstar.ai
- RSS Feed: https://shipstar.ai/feed.xml
- Privacy Policy: https://shipstar.ai/privacy
- Terms of Service: https://shipstar.ai/terms