Commit Message Generator

Purpose

Generate well-formatted commit messages following the Conventional Commits specification.

When to Use

• User asks "help me write a commit message"

• User says "commit this" or "commit my changes"

• User wants to review staged changes before committing

• User asks for commit message suggestions

• User mentions "conventional commit" or asks about commit format

Instructions

Check staged changes:

git diff --staged

If no staged changes, check unstaged:

git diff

Analyze the changes and identify:

• Type: feat, fix, docs, refactor, test, chore, perf, ci, style, build

• Scope: Affected area/module (optional but recommended)

• Description: What changed and why

Generate commit message in format:

type(scope): brief description

Optional body with more details.

• Bullet points for multiple changes
• Explain the "why" not just "what"

Optional footer for breaking changes or issue refs.

Commit Types

Type Description

feat

New feature or capability

fix

Bug fix

docs

Documentation only

refactor

Code change that neither fixes nor adds feature

test

Adding or updating tests

chore

Maintenance, dependencies, configs

perf

Performance improvement

ci

CI/CD changes

style

Formatting, whitespace (no code change)

build

Build system or external dependencies

Examples

Example 1: Feature Addition

Changes: Added new user authentication endpoint

Output:

feat(auth): add user authentication endpoint

• Implement JWT-based authentication
• Add login and logout endpoints
• Include token refresh mechanism

Closes #123

Example 2: Bug Fix

Changes: Fixed date display issue in reports

Output:

fix(reports): correct date formatting in timezone conversion

Use UTC timestamps consistently across report generation. Previous implementation used local time, causing incorrect dates for users in different timezones.

Example 3: Refactoring

Changes: Extracted duplicate validation logic

Output:

refactor(validation): extract common validation utilities

• Move email validation to shared utils
• Create reusable phone number validator
• Reduce code duplication across forms

Example 4: Breaking Change

Changes: Changed API response format

Output:

feat(api)!: change response format to JSON:API spec

BREAKING CHANGE: API responses now follow JSON:API specification. Clients need to update their response parsing logic.

Migration guide: docs/migration-v2.md

Guidelines

• First line: Under 72 characters

• Use imperative mood: "add" not "added", "fix" not "fixed"

• Scope is optional but helps with changelogs

• Body: Explain "why" for non-obvious changes

• Footer: Reference issues, note breaking changes

• Separate concerns: One logical change per commit

Co-Author Attribution

When AI assists with commits, include attribution:

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>