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commit

/octopus:commit reads the staged diff, drafts a Conventional Commits message (type(scope): description + body explaining why), shows it for confirmation, and runs git commit once approved. It handles the moves around the commit that are easy to forget: detecting the language to write in, picking the right type, appending AI co-authored trailers, and refusing --no-verify.

Why this exists

Conventional Commits is a small format with outsized impact — the release flow reads commit types to suggest semver bumps, the PR title is derived from the dominant type on the branch, and the CHANGELOG groups entries by type emoji. A free-form message breaks all of that.

The cost of remembering the format manually is non-trivial in practice (especially mid-debug). Delegating to a command that reads the diff and proposes a message removes that friction without giving up the structure.

Language resolution

The commit message language is not the same as the conversation language. The command resolves it in this order:

  1. .octopus/rules/common/language.local.md if present
  2. .octopus.yml language.code: value
  3. Detection from git log --oneline -20 — match the dominant language already in the project’s history
  4. Default: English

This matters because the project may have a Portuguese-speaking team that documents in pt-BR but commits in English (a common pattern for open-source-leaning projects). The command separates the two channels deliberately.

AI co-authored trailers

When the assistant generated or substantially modified the code, the command appends the corresponding trailer to the commit body:

Co-authored-by: claude <claude@anthropic.com>

The human author stays the commit author; the assistant is the co-author. Trailers are not added for suggestion-only assistance.

Nothing is added for Octopus itself. Earlier versions appended an octopus[bot] trailer to every message the command formatted, which said nothing about who wrote the code — a hand-typed change carried it just as a generated one did — while adding a phantom contributor to git shortlog, the contributor graph and every Co-authored-by query. Attribution is for authorship, not tooling.

What it refuses

  • Empty staging area without a clear instruction to stage
  • --no-verify — pre-commit hooks exist for a reason
  • Committing files that look like secrets (.env, credentials.json)
  • Mixing multiple logical changes in one commit when the diff spans unrelated areas (proposes splitting instead)

Source: commands/commit.md