Investigate git-cliff for richer contributor attribution in releases

[davidpoblador]

Context

We recently enabled include-commit-authors in release-please to credit PR authors inline. This is a good start, but git-cliff offers significantly more flexibility:

• Full Tera template engine for changelog formatting
• is_first_time contributor detection for "New Contributors" sections
• Richer GitHub API integration (PR labels, co-authors, reviewers)
• Can generate per-release notes independently from CHANGELOG.md

Investigation scope

• Evaluate using git-cliff alongside release-please (for GitHub release notes only, not CHANGELOG.md)
• Alternatively, evaluate replacing release-please entirely with git-cliff + a custom version-bump workflow
• Consider how git-cliff output would feed into the Hugo website changelog
• Assess maintenance burden vs. value

References

• https://git-cliff.org/
• https://github.com/orhun/git-cliff