[HN Gopher] Show HN: Build the habit of writing meaningful commi...
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Show HN: Build the habit of writing meaningful commit messages
Too often I find myself being lazy with commit messages. But I
don't want AI to write them for me... only i truly know why i wrote
the code i did. So why don't i get AI to help me get that into
words from my head? That's what i built: smartcommit asks you
questions about your changes, then helps you articulate what you
already know into a proper commit message. Captures the what, how,
and why. Built this after repeatedly being confused 6 months in a
project as to why i made the change i had made... Would love
feedback!
Author : Aplikethewatch
Score : 21 points
Date : 2025-11-22 20:54 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| teeray wrote:
| > strictly enforces the Conventional Commits specification (feat,
| fix, chore, etc.).
|
| Nope. Waste of bytes in my commit message header that are better
| done by git trailers.
|
| Otherwise, I love the idea of the tool. I personally try to
| answer "why does this commit exist?" when I create commits.
| Aplikethewatch wrote:
| Interesting, never knew about git trailers - will have a look!
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Core AI model interaction is here
| https://github.com/arpxspace/smartcommit/blob/main/internal/...
|
| It is fun you have to pre-prompt with: You are an expert software
| developer.
| Aplikethewatch wrote:
| yes lol...
|
| I also found i had to hold llama3.1's hand more than gpt4o but
| i suppose that is a given since it's a much smaller model.
| delusional wrote:
| I'm assuming the commits in the repo were generated with the tool
| itself. In that case, commit `cc677f7` has a (in my opinion)
| terrible commit message. It starts out with a listing of stuff I
| could just as well read from the patch. It then contains another
| list that tries to explain the why, but it ends up being useless
| fluff like `The full path specification in `go build` was
| redundant given the context of how Go modules are structured.`
| and `streamlining the project structure and reducing unnecessary
| directory complexity.` which tells me exactly nothing about why
| those changes were made.
|
| It generates a whole lot of text that makes me none the wiser as
| to why you wanted to do any of those changes. It feels like a
| robot trying to justify the changes post hoc. Which it of course
| is, so that's understandable.
|
| Don't take this comment as rudeness BTW. It's cool that you're
| making a fun little tool. I'm assuming you care about writing
| more useful commit messages, so I thought I'd give you some
| feedback on that part.
| Aplikethewatch wrote:
| Yeah totally see where you're coming from, i seemed to have
| been slightly lazy with that commit... However, the tool does
| ensure that the dev has the final say; it will open the user's
| editor with the commit message that the ai has 'drafted' so the
| dev can make necessary changes - it provides a starting point
| that a dev can then tailor.
| Uptrenda wrote:
| All my commit messages are a mess and I spend the time that I
| have designing and writing code, not figuring out how to make the
| commit message look pretty. That's what merges are for. I don't
| see the value of this tbh. Just pedantic time wasting.
| wredcoll wrote:
| When these people say "commit" they're referring to the same
| concept you "merge".
| journal wrote:
| ok, but did they have to make commit message required, or is
| there a way to disable it? i think of git as checkpoints, nothing
| more. the day i have to explore history is the day i quit.
| landr0id wrote:
| totally. the fact git-quicksave isn't a standard command that
| commits with an "Autosave" message is pretty short-sighted.
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(page generated 2025-11-22 23:00 UTC)