Dry-run & undo

Dry-run

Pass -d / --dry-run to preview a release end-to-end without touching anything: no files written, no git add, no commit, no tag, no push:

verbump --dry-run

...
[dry-run] would set .version = '1.0.1' in package.json
[dry-run] git add package.json
[dry-run] would replace CHANGELOG.md with: ...
[dry-run] would run: git commit -m 'chore: updated package.json, ...'
[dry-run] would run: git tag -a v1.0.1 -m 'Tag version 1.0.1.'

Combine with --no-commit / --no-changelog to narrow the preview down to just the steps you want to see.

JSON preview

Add --json (with -y, -v, a bump level, or --preid) to print the release plan as one JSON object on stdout — everything else goes to stderr, so scripts, CI, and agents can consume it directly:

verbump --minor --dry-run --json > plan.json

--json is preview-only: it requires --dry-run, and real runs keep their normal output.

Undo

--undo [<version>] deletes an unpushed release's tag, plus its release-X.Y.Z branch when one was cut. It refuses if the release has been pushed or the tree is dirty.

What --undo does and doesn't undo. With tag-in-place (the default), --undo deletes the tag but the bump commit stays on your branch — for a full rollback, follow it with git reset --hard HEAD~1 (run git log -1 first to confirm HEAD is the bump commit). With --branch / --pr the undo is complete, because the bump commit lives on the release branch it deletes. Once anything has been pushed — or a release branch has been merged — --undo refuses: delete the remote tag/branch and git revert the bump commit instead.