Act vs semantic-release

act is an open-source command-line tool that runs GitHub Actions workflows locally using Docker containers. It reads workflow files from .github/workflows/ and executes them with environment variables and filesystem configurations matching GitHub's hosted runners. The tool enables fast local feedback on workflow changes without requiring commits and pushes to a remote repository.

semantic-release is Fully automated version management and package publishing based on commit message conventions.. It is available under a free model. This tool falls under the developer utilities category.