aiautocommit 0.18.0

AI generated commit messages

Generate Commit Messages With AI

aiautocommit analyzes your staged changes and creates conventional commit messages.

Yes, there are a lot of these. Main ways this is different:

• Ability to easily customize prompts on a per-repo basis
• Exclusions (e.g., lock files) that still generate messages without bloating the AI prompt
• Optional difftastic integration for syntax-aware diffs that improve message quality
• Support for multiple AI providers via pydantic-ai, with Google Gemini as the default

Installation

uvx aiautocommit

Note: OpenAI, Anthropic, and Gemini (Google) are supported by default. To install all providers supported by Pydantic AI, use pip install "aiautocommit[all-providers]".

Features

• Generates conventional commit messages
• Customizable prompts and exclusions
• Pre-commit hook integration
• Supports custom config directories
• CLI flag for version checking (--version)
• Does not generate a commit during a merge or reversion (when an existing autogen'd msg exists)
• Automatic lock file handling: lock files (e.g., uv.lock, package-lock.json) generate conventional messages (e.g., chore(deps): update uv.lock) even when they are excluded from the AI prompt.
• Optional difftastic integration for syntax-aware semantic diffs

Getting Started

Set your API key (works for any provider, Google Gemini is the default):

export AIAUTOCOMMIT_AI_KEY=<YOUR API KEY>

Stage your changes and run aiautocommit:

git add .

# this will generate a commit message and commit the changes
aiautocommit commit

# or, just to see what it will do
aiautocommit commit --print-message

Using the CLI directly is the best way to debug and tinker with the project as well.

Difftastic Integration (Optional)

aiautocommit can optionally use difftastic for syntax-aware diffs that understand code structure rather than just line-by-line changes. This helps the AI distinguish between refactoring (variable renames, code movement) and actual functional changes, leading to more accurate commit messages. Install with brew install difftastic (macOS) or cargo install difftastic (Linux/Windows), then enable with:

aiautocommit commit --difftastic

Automatic Lock File Handling

Lock files (like uv.lock, package-lock.json, Gemfile.lock, etc.) are frequently updated but don't provide much context for an AI-generated message. By default, these are excluded from the AI prompt to save tokens and improve quality.

However, if you stage only lock files, aiautocommit will detect them and automatically generate a conventional commit message:

• uv.lock -> chore(deps): update uv.lock
• package-lock.json -> chore(deps): update package-lock.json
• .terraform.lock.hcl -> chore(deps): update .terraform.lock.hcl
• Mixed lock files -> chore(deps): update lock files

If any non-lock files are staged alongside them, the AI will ignore the lock files (based on your exclusions) and focus on the code changes.

Customization

Logging

First, you'll want to enable logging so you can extract the diff and prompt and iterate on it in ChatGPT:

export AIAUTOCOMMIT_LOG_LEVEL=DEBUG
export AIAUTOCOMMIT_LOG_PATH=aiautocommit.log

Now, you'll have a log you can tail and fiddle with from there.

Additional debugging commands:

# Print the compiled system prompt (after all config files are merged)
aiautocommit output-prompt

# Print the compiled file exclusions list
aiautocommit output-exclusions

# Generate a ChatGPT-ready debug block for a past commit to help iterate on the prompt
aiautocommit debug-prompt <sha> "the commit message was too vague"

debug-prompt outputs the diff, the generated commit message, and the full prompt in a format you can paste directly into ChatGPT to get suggestions for improving the prompt.

Using Config Directory

aiautocommit looks for configuration files in these locations (in priority order):

• .aiautocommit in current directory — as a directory for full config, or a file to append to the default prompt
• $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/aiautocommit/ (defaults to ~/.config/aiautocommit/)
• Custom path via aiautocommit_CONFIG environment variable

To get started with customization:

aiautocommit dump-prompts

This creates a .aiautocommit/ directory with:

• commit_prompt.txt: Template for generating commit messages
• excluded_files.txt: List of files or glob patterns (e.g., mise*lock) to exclude from processing
• commit_suffix.txt: Static suffix to append to commit messages. Useful for trailers.

Lightweight Prompt Extension

If you only want to extend the default prompt rather than replace it entirely, create a plain .aiautocommit file (not a directory) in your repo root. Its contents will be appended to the stock commit_prompt.txt:

echo "Always include the ticket number from the branch name in the subject line." > .aiautocommit

This is the simplest way to add project-specific instructions without duplicating the full default prompt.

Installing Pre-commit Hook

To automatically generate commit messages during git commits:

aiautocommit install-pre-commit

Learn more about git hooks here.

Customize Scopes

First, dump the prompts into your project:

aiautocommit dump-prompts

Then add your scope specification to the commit prompt:

#### 4. **Scopes**

Optional scopes (e.g., `feat(api):`):
- `api`: API endpoints, controllers, services.
- `frontend`: React components, styles, state management.
- `migration`: Database schema changes.
- `jobs`: Background jobs, scheduled tasks.
- `infra`: Infrastructure, networking, deployment, containerization.
- `prompt`: Updates to LLM or AI prompts.

Lefthook Configuration

Lefthook is a tool for managing git hooks. To use aiautocommit with lefthook, add the following to your .lefthook.yml:

prepare-commit-msg:
  commands:
    aiautocommit:
      run: aiautocommit commit --output-file "{1}"
      interactive: true
      env:
        # without this, lefthook will run in an infinite loop
        LEFTHOOK: 0
        # ensures that LOG_LEVEL config of the current project does not interfere with aiautocommit
        AIAUTOCOMMIT_LOG_LEVEL: info
      skip:
        merge:
        rebase:
        # only run this if the tool exists
        run: ! which aiautocommit > /dev/null

Environment Variables

All environment variables used by aiautocommit or its providers can be prefixed with AIAUTOCOMMIT_ to take precedence over the standard variable.

• AIAUTOCOMMIT_AI_KEY: Universal API key. aiautocommit internally maps this to the correct provider-specific variable (e.g., GOOGLE_API_KEY, OPENAI_API_KEY) based on your active model.
• AIAUTOCOMMIT_MODEL: AI model to use, in provider:model format (default: gemini:gemini-3-flash-preview). Examples: anthropic:claude-3-5-sonnet-latest, openai:gpt-4o.
• AIAUTOCOMMIT_CONFIG: Custom config directory path
• AIAUTOCOMMIT_DIFFTASTIC: Enable difftastic for syntax-aware diffs (set to "1", "true", or "yes")
• AIAUTOCOMMIT_LOG_LEVEL: Logging verbosity
• AIAUTOCOMMIT_LOG_PATH: Custom log file path

Ensure you have the corresponding API key set in AIAUTOCOMMIT_AI_KEY.

Model Configuration

aiautocommit uses pydantic-ai under the hood, supporting a wide range of providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Gemini (via VertexAI or Generative AI) by default. You can specify the model using the provider:model syntax in the AIAUTOCOMMIT_MODEL environment variable.

Google Gemini models use "thinking" (Chain of Thought) with a minimal budget to improve accuracy.

Common examples:

• gemini:gemini-3-flash-preview (default)
• openai:gpt-4o
• anthropic:claude-3-5-sonnet-latest
• gemini:gemini-1.5-pro
• ollama:llama3 (for local models)

Ensure you have the corresponding API key set in your environment (e.g., ANTHROPIC_API_KEY for Anthropic models).

Writing Commit Messages

Some guides to writing commit messages:

• https://cbea.ms/git-commit/
• https://groups.google.com/g/golang-dev/c/6M4dmZWpFaI
• https://github.com/RomuloOliveira/commit-messages-guide

Credits

This project inspired this project. It had a simple codebase. I've taken the idea and expanded it to include more features, specifically per-project prompt customization.

Related Projects

I looked at a bunch of projects before building this one.

• https://github.com/abi/aiautocommit - python, inactive. Many files, not simple.
• https://github.com/Sett17/turboCommit - rust, inactive.
• https://github.com/Nutlope/aicommits - typescript. Node is so slow and I hate working with it.
• https://github.com/Elhameed/aicommits - python
• https://github.com/zurawiki/gptcommit - active, rust. Too complicated and no prompt customization.
• https://github.com/ywkim/gpt-commit - lisp, inactive.
• https://github.com/markuswt/gpt-commit - single file, python based. No commits > 1yr. Very simple codebase.
• https://github.com/josenerydev/gpt-commit - also python
• https://github.com/di-sukharev/opencommit - has conventional commit structure

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This project was created from iloveitaly/python-package-template