Git Commit Helper

Overview

Great commit messages are documentation. Bad ones are noise. Git Commit Helper ensures every commit in your repository tells a clear story about what changed and why.

The skill analyzes your staged changes — not just file names, but the actual semantic meaning of your diff — and generates commit messages that follow conventional commit format. It distinguishes between fixes, features, refactors, and chores, and includes scope when relevant.

For pull requests, it generates structured descriptions with summaries, detailed change lists, testing notes, and reviewer guidance.

How It Works

1. Diff analysis — Reads your staged changes and understands the semantic intent
2. Classification — Determines if the change is a feat, fix, refactor, chore, docs, test, etc.
3. Message generation — Produces a conventional commit message with appropriate scope and description
4. PR description — Optionally generates a full PR description from the branch’s cumulative changes

Use Cases

• Consistent commit history — Enforce conventional commits across your team
• Changelog generation — Well-formatted commits enable automated changelogs
• PR automation — Generate PR descriptions instantly from branch diffs
• Onboarding — Help new developers write better commit messages
• Time savings — Stop staring at the commit message prompt

Getting Started

# As a git hook
npm install -g git-commit-helper
git-commit-helper init

# Generate commit message for staged changes
git add .
git-commit-helper suggest

# Generate PR description
git-commit-helper pr-describe --base main

Example

For staged changes that fix a null pointer in the user authentication service:

fix(auth): handle null user object in session validation

- Add null check before accessing user.permissions
- Return 401 instead of crashing with TypeError
- Add regression test for unauthenticated session edge case

Closes #234

Alternatives

• aicommits — AI-generated git commit messages using OpenAI
• Conventional Commits — Manual specification without AI assistance
• gitmoji — Emoji-based commit conventions