feat: update VERSION file with detailed changelog and enhance create-release workflow to read changelog from VERSION

Author: Nerdy-Technician

.github/VERSION

@@ -1,3 +1,53 @@
 VERSION=1.0.0
 RELEASE_DATE=2026-01-15
 BUILD_NUMBER=1
+CHANGELOG=
+## 🎉 Initial Release - Complete Nexterm Toolkit
+
+### 🔐 Security & Audit Suite (4 scripts)
+- **Security-Full-Audit.sh** - Comprehensive system security check with UFW, SSH failures, open ports, SUID scans
+- **Security-SSH-Hardening-Check.sh** - Validates SSH configuration against best practices
+- **Security-Fail2Ban-Status.sh** - Monitor jail status, banned IPs, and attack statistics
+- **Security-Certificate-Expiry.sh** - Certificate expiry tracking with automatic warnings
+
+### 🐳 Docker Management Suite (4 scripts)
+- **Docker-Cleanup-Interactive.sh** - Interactive cleanup for containers, images, and volumes
+- **Docker-Health-Check.sh** - Detect unhealthy containers and disk space issues
+- **Docker-Compose-Manager.sh** - Auto-discover and manage docker-compose projects
+- **Docker-Image-Updater.sh** - Check for updates and restart containers with new images
+
+### 🖥️ System Maintenance Suite (4 scripts)
+- **System-Weekly-Maintenance.sh** - Automated APT updates, cleanup, and service checks
+- **System-Log-Rotation-Check.sh** - Validates logrotate configuration and large log detection
+- **System-Backup-Verify.sh** - Age and integrity verification for backup archives
+- **System-Zombie-Process-Killer.sh** - Find and clean up defunct processes
+
+### 📡 Network Diagnostics Suite (3 scripts)
+- **Network-Speed-Test.sh** - Bandwidth testing with historical logging
+- **Network-Connection-Monitor.sh** - Continuous connectivity monitoring with alerts
+- **Network-Port-Scanner.sh** - Common port scanning with service identification
+
+### ⚡ Performance & Monitoring Suite (3 scripts)
+- **Performance-Snapshot.sh** - System-wide performance capture for comparison
+- **Performance-Disk-IO-Check.sh** - Disk I/O analysis and bottleneck detection
+- **Performance-Service-Resource-Usage.sh** - Systemd service resource profiling
+
+### 🚀 Quick Fixes & Helpers (2 scripts)
+- **Quick-Reboot-Required-Check.sh** - Kernel updates, reboot flags, and service checks
+- **Quick-User-Add-With-Key.sh** - User creation with SSH key and sudo configuration
+- **Quick-Port-Forward.sh** - UFW-based port forwarding with validation
+
+### 📝 35 Nexterm Snippets
+- **APT Management** - Update, upgrade, autoremove, clean, hold/unhold packages
+- **System Monitoring** - Uptime, load, memory, disk, process, service, and kernel info
+- **Network Tools** - Interfaces, open ports, DNS, ping, tracepath, public IP detection
+- **Firewall/Security** - UFW status, SSH rules, auth logs, login tracking
+- **Docker Utilities** - Container and image listing
+
+### ✨ Features
+- Full @NEXTERM directive integration (STEP, INPUT, CONFIRM, SUMMARY, messaging)
+- Automatic changelog generation from VERSION file
+- ZIP artifact with SHA256 checksums
+- Interactive workflows with confirmations
+- Comprehensive error handling and status reporting
+

.github/workflows/create-release.yml

@@ -51,15 +51,11 @@ jobs:
           PREV_TAG=$(git tag --list --sort=-v:refname | grep -v "^v${{ steps.tag_version.outputs.version }}$" | head -1)
           echo "prev_tag=$PREV_TAG" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT
 
-      - name: Generate changelog
+      - name: Read changelog from VERSION file
         id: changelog
         run: |
-          PREV_TAG=${{ steps.prev_tag.outputs.prev_tag }}
-          if [ -z "$PREV_TAG" ]; then
-            CHANGELOG=$(git log --oneline | head -20)
-          else
-            CHANGELOG=$(git log "$PREV_TAG"..HEAD --oneline)
-          fi
+          # Extract changelog from .github/VERSION file
+          CHANGELOG=$(sed -n '/^CHANGELOG=/,/^[A-Z]/p' .github/VERSION | sed '1d;$d' | sed 's/^CHANGELOG=//')
           echo "changelog<<EOF" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT
           echo "$CHANGELOG" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT
           echo "EOF" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT
@@ -76,7 +72,7 @@ jobs:
             - 📦 **Scripts:** ${{ steps.archive.outputs.scripts }}
             - 🔧 **Snippets:** ${{ steps.archive.outputs.snippets }}
 
-            ## Recent Changes
+            ## Changes
             ```
             ${{ steps.changelog.outputs.changelog }}
             ```