Commit Work

Commit work

Goal

Make commits that are easy to review and safe to ship:

• only intended changes are included
• commits are logically scoped (split when needed)
• commit messages describe what changed and why

Inputs to ask for (if missing)

• Single commit or multiple commits? (If unsure: default to multiple small commits when there are unrelated changes.)
• Commit style: Conventional Commits are required.
• Any rules: max subject length, required scopes.

Workflow (checklist)

1. Inspect the working tree before staging
2. git status
3. git diff (unstaged)
4. If many changes: git diff --stat
5. Decide commit boundaries (split if needed)
6. Split by: feature vs refactor, backend vs frontend, formatting vs logic, tests vs prod code, dependency bumps vs behavior changes.
7. If changes are mixed in one file, plan to use patch staging.
8. Stage only what belongs in the next commit
9. Prefer patch staging for mixed changes: git add -p
10. To unstage a hunk/file: git restore --staged -p or git restore --staged <path>
11. Review what will actually be committed
12. git diff --cached
13. Sanity checks:
14. no secrets or tokens
15. no accidental debug logging
16. no unrelated formatting churn
17. Describe the staged change in 1-2 sentences (before writing the message)
18. "What changed?" + "Why?"
19. If you cannot describe it cleanly, the commit is probably too big or mixed; go back to step 2.
20. Write the commit message
21. Use Conventional Commits (required):
22. type(scope): short summary
23. blank line
24. body (what/why, not implementation diary)
25. footer (BREAKING CHANGE) if needed
26. Prefer an editor for multi-line messages: git commit -v
27. Use references/commit-message-template.md if helpful.
28. Run the smallest relevant verification
29. Run the repo's fastest meaningful check (unit tests, lint, or build) before moving on.
30. Repeat for the next commit until the working tree is clean

Deliverable

Provide:

• the final commit message(s)
• a short summary per commit (what/why)
• the commands used to stage/review (at minimum: git diff --cached, plus any tests run)