Commit Message Style

Format

<short summary line>

- <change>
- <change>
- <change>

Rules

Summary line (first line)

• One line only
• Short and crisp -- aim for under 72 characters
• Use the imperative mood: "Add feature" not "Added feature" or "Adds feature"
• No trailing period
• Describe what the commit does, not how

Blank lines

• Always exactly one blank line between the summary line and the bullet list (never omit it)
• No blank lines between bullet list items -- the list must be tight and contiguous (single newline after each item, never an empty/blank line)
• No trailing blank lines at the end of the commit message

Bullet points

• Each bullet describes a single, specific change
• Short and crisp -- one line per bullet
• Keep bullet items contiguous with no blank lines between them
• Start each bullet with a verb in the imperative mood (Add, Fix, Remove, Update, Rename, Move, Extract, etc.)
• No trailing periods
• No fluff or filler words

Never include

• Blank lines between bullet list items (loose lists)
• Co-author lines (no Co-authored-by: trailer)
• Generated by Claude or any AI attribution
• Redundant context already obvious from the diff

Examples

Good:

Add user authentication middleware

- Add JWT validation to protected routes
- Return 401 on missing or expired token
- Extract auth logic into separate middleware file
- Add unit tests for token validation

Fix null pointer crash on empty cart checkout

- Guard against null items array before totalling
- Add early return when cart has no items
- Log warning when checkout attempted on empty cart

Bad (do not do this):

Updated some stuff and fixed a few things that were broken and also added
some new features to the codebase

- I made some changes to the auth file because it was crashing

- Also fixed the cart thing
- Co-authored-by: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>