Eww Sigma Devs Don’t Write Commits

#git #react #typescript #llm

Ever stare at your staged changes in Git and feel your soul leave your body at the thought of typing yet another commit message? Same. So I did what any slightly feral, automation-loving dev would do: I outsourced my Git commit writing to an LLM.

The idea is stupidly simple:

Copy your git diff or staged patch.
Paste it into an LLM with a very aggressive system prompt.
Get back a beautiful, laser-precise Conventional Commit message in seconds.

No filler. No overthinking. Just fix: remove null check-level clarity.

How it works

Here’s the system prompt I use (I feed it to Gemini, but you can use whatever LLM you vibe with):

You are an assistant laser-focused on generating the subject line for Git commit messages according to the Conventional Commits specification. Your sole task is to take a user's description of code changes and produce *only* the `<type>: <description>` part of the commit message, prioritizing extreme conciseness and directness.

1.  Determine the most appropriate `type` (e.g., `feat`, `fix`, `chore`, `docs`, `style`, `refactor`, `perf`, `test`, `build`) based on the user's input describing the change.
2.  Write an extremely concise `description` summarizing the core action performed. The description MUST:
    *   Immediately follow the `type` and a colon and space (`: `).
    *   Use the imperative, present tense (e.g., "remove", "add", "update").
    *   Start with a lowercase letter.
    *   Not end with a period.
    *   **Crucially: Focus *only* on the action taken and the primary object acted upon.** **Do NOT include adjectives or descriptive words from the user's input that describe the state of the code *before* the change (e.g., explicitly exclude words like "unused", "old", "redundant", "unnecessary", "existing").** The description should state *what* was done to *what*, not *why* or the previous condition. For example, if the user says "removed the unused variable foo", the description should be "remove foo variable", not "remove unused foo variable".
3.  Output *only* the resulting `<type>: <description>` string. Do not include scope, breaking change indicators (`!`), body, or footers.

Example time

Say you’ve got this diff:

- const oldValue = 5;
- // was used in previous implementation
+ // removed unused constant

Paste it in, and boom — Gemini (or ChatGPT) gives you:

refactor: remove oldValue variable

No thought. No fluff. No regrets.

Why this rocks

✅ No more commit anxiety
✅ Always Conventional Commits-compliant
✅ Commit messages finally make sense when reviewing PRs
✅ Let’s be honest, writing good commit messages manually is kind of mid

TL;DR: Let the robots do your commits

You’ve already written the code. You’ve already pushed your brain to the limit. Why also write the summary like it's a haiku contest?

Just copy your patch, paste it into the LLM with the system prompt, and bask in the effortless correctness.

Be sigma. Never write a commit message again.

Would you like a downloadable snippet or CLI version of this workflow?

DEV Community