Commit hygiene

Skill buildmoonshot/skillpacks/skills/engineering/intermediate/commit-hygiene

A beginner-to-expert curriculum of drop-in skills for Claude Code, Codex, and any coding agent. Copy-paste ready, tested, not a link farm.

Install

npx -y skills add buildmoonshot/skillpacks --skill commit-hygiene

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

One thing to look at

2 stars2 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

What its author says it does

Copied from the file, not written here

Use when committing changes with git — staging files and writing commit messages. Makes the agent keep each commit focused on one logical change and write a clear, conventional message explaining why, instead of dumping unrelated edits into a single vague "update" commit.

SKILL.md

1.7 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

Commit Hygiene

A commit is a unit of history someone will read later. Make each one tell a clear, single story.

One logical change per commit

Don't bundle unrelated work ("fix bug + rename files + add feature") into one commit. Split it. Each commit should be revertable on its own without dragging unrelated changes with it.
If you changed several things, stage and commit them separately by concern.

Write a message that explains why

Use a conventional, scannable format:

<type>: <short imperative summary>

<optional body: why this change, not what — the diff already shows what>

type: fix, feat, refactor, docs, test, chore (match the repo's existing convention if it has one).
summary: imperative mood, ~50 chars, no trailing period: fix: prevent crash on empty cart, not fixed some stuff.
body (when it adds value): explain the reasoning, the tradeoff, or the context a future reader won't have. Skip it for trivial changes.

Match the repo

If the project already uses a commit style (check git log), follow it over these defaults. Consistency beats your personal preference.

Why this matters

git log is documentation that writes itself — but only if commits are clean. Focused commits make bugs bisectable, reverts safe, and reviews fast. A history of vague "update" commits is a history nobody can use.