cmt-cli

AI-powered CLI tool that analyzes your staged Git changes and suggests a professional commit message.

Note: cmt-cli is in beta. Expect occasional breaking changes and rough edges until a stable release.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Requirements
• Installation
• Configuration
• Usage
• Updating
• Uninstalling
• Privacy & Cost
• Development
• License

Features

• Analyzes staged Git changes (added, modified, deleted, and renamed files, plus diffs)
• Generates a commit message and description using OpenAI (via LangChain)
• Summarizes all current working-tree changes (staged and unstaged) with cmt summary
• Review, edit (in vim), or reject the suggested message before committing
• Caches suggestions per diff/model to avoid redundant API calls
• Simple configuration for your OpenAI API key and model

Requirements

• Python 3.12+
• Git
• vim installed and available on your PATH (used for the e / edit option)
• An OpenAI API key

Installation

uv tool install cmt-cli

Configuration

Before first use, configure your OpenAI API key and model:

cmt config set

If no model is specified, cmt-cli defaults to gpt-4o-mini. Configuration is stored in ~/.config/cmt/config.ini.

To view your current configuration:

cmt config get

Usage

Stage your changes as usual, then run:

git add .
cmt suggest

You'll be shown a suggested commit message and can choose to:

• y — commit with the suggested message
• e — edit the message in vim before committing
• n — abort

To get an AI-generated summary of all your current changes (staged and unstaged, compared to HEAD) without committing:

cmt summary

Other commands:

cmt --version   # print the installed version
cmt update      # check whether a newer version is available

Updating

cmt update

This checks PyPI for a newer release. If one is available, upgrade it with:

uv tool upgrade cmt-cli

Uninstalling

uv tool uninstall cmt-cli

Privacy & Cost

cmt suggest sends your staged diff (and cmt summary your current diff) to the OpenAI API to generate a commit message, so avoid staging secrets or sensitive data before running it. Each request uses your own OpenAI API key and is subject to OpenAI's standard usage pricing; cmt-cli caches suggestions per diff/model locally (~/.config/cmt/cache) to help avoid redundant, repeat API calls.

Development

Clone the repo and install dependencies with uv:

git clone https://github.com/bijaydas/cmt.git
cd cmt
uv sync --all-groups

Run the test suite and linter:

uv run pytest
uv run ruff check .

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT license.