@viccalexander/smart-commit

Introducing Smart Commit ✨

CLI-first AI commit messages. Git stays in the terminal.

Smart Commit uses AI to write clean, consistent, and professional commit messages so you can stay in flow. 🌊

🚀 Quickstart

Get up and running in seconds. No complex configuration required.

# 1. Install globally
npm install -g @viccalexander/smart-commit

# 2. Run it (first time walks you through setup)
git smart-commit

⚡️ Why Smart Commit?

Whether you are vibe coding a side project or shipping production systems, Smart Commit keeps your Git history clean across iOS, frontend, backend, and everything in between.

It works just as well for Swift, JavaScript, Python, Go, Rails, infra repos, or monorepos 🫠.

• 🧠 Context-Aware: Understands your changes using LLMs.
• 🏷️ Auto-Tagging: Grabs Linear/Jira issue keys from your branch names automatically.
• 🎨 Scannable: Prepends emojis for a visual, readable history.
• 🛠️ Zero Ceremony: No pre-commit hooks or "standard-version" headaches.

🛠 How It Works

Smart Commit acts as a smart wrapper around your staging and committing process:

• Scans your staged changes (or helps you stage them).
• Analyzes the diff to understand the intent of the code.
• Drafts a perfect commit message with an emoji and issue key.
• Asks for your vibe check—approve, edit, or cancel.

The Result: ✨ PROJ-123: Add intelligent retry logic to API client

• Implemented exponential backoff
• Added circuit breaker pattern

💫 Features

🔧 Multi-Provider Support

• OpenAI - GPT-5, GPT-4 models
• Anthropic - Claude 4.5 (Sonnet, Opus, Haiku)
• Google - Gemini 3 Flash/Pro
• Ollama - Local models (Llama, Mistral, CodeLlama, etc.)
• Custom models - Easy model switching

🎯 Issue Tracking Integration

• Auto-detects issue keys from branch names (e.g., vicc-123)
• Linear-friendly - Works with Linear's branch naming
• Any issue tracker - Supports any prefix-number format

🛡️ Safe & Flexible

• Preview first - See the message before committing
• Edit mode - Tweak messages before committing (-e flag)
• Auto-commit - Fast path when you trust it (-y flag)
• Dry run - Test without committing (--dry-run)

⚡️ Easy Setup & Management

• Interactive wizard - One-time setup, auto-installs dependencies
• Multiple commands - git smart-commit or smart-commit
• Built-in help - --help flag for documentation
• Easy uninstall - --uninstall with smart detection

📦 Installation Options

Method	Command
npm (Best)	npm install -g @viccalexander/smart-commit
Homebrew	brew tap vicc/tap && brew install smart-commit
Manual	curl -o ~/bin/git-smart-commit https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vicc/smart-commit/main/bin/git-smart-commit

⚙️ Initial Setup

The first time you run git smart-commit, a friendly wizard will help you:

• Set up the llm CLI tool (automatic).
• Connect OpenAI or Anthropic.
• Enter your API key.
• Select a model (e.g., gpt-4o-mini or claude-3-haiku).

Need to change something later?

smart-commit --setup

🤖 Codex skill: /smart-commit

Use smart-commit inside Codex CLI without keeping this repo around.

Install:

git clone https://github.com/vicc/smart-commit.git
cd smart-commit
codex skills install dist/smart-commit.skill

Use:

• Stage your changes (git add ...) in any git repo.
• Open Codex CLI and run /smart-commit.
• Copy the message or ask Codex to git commit -m "<message>".

Once installed, you can delete the repo—the skill stays available in Codex. Releases also include the .skill file for direct download.

🎮 Usage Guide

Command	Action
git smart-commit	The Standard: Preview, then confirm.
git smart-commit -y	The Speedrun: Commit immediately without asking.
git smart-commit -e	The Perfectionist: Open in editor before saving.
git smart-commit --dry-run	The Lurker: See the message without committing.

🎨 The Emoji Guide

We follow a consistent style to make your git log look like a work of art:

• ✨ Feature: New functionality
• 🐛 Fix: Squashing bugs
• ♻️ Refactor: Code improvements (non-breaking)
• 🎨 UI: Changes to the look and feel
• 🔥 Cleanup: Removing code or files
• ⚡️ Perf: Improving performance
• 📝 Docs: Documentation changes

🤝 Contributing

Got an idea to make it even better? Feel free to open an issue or submit a PR!

Philosophy: Good commit history is a love letter to future you or rather less of a FU to future you. 💌

FAQ

How much does it cost?

Smart Commit itself is free and open source. You'll need an API key for cloud LLM providers:

• OpenAI - Pay-per-use (GPT-4o-mini is ~$0.01 per commit)
• Anthropic - Pay-per-use (similar pricing)
• Google - Pay-per-use (Gemini has free tier)
• Ollama - Completely free (runs locally)

Is my code sent to an LLM?

Only file names and diff summaries are sent - not your actual code content. Smart Commit uses git diff --name-status to see what changed, which shows:

M    src/components/Button.tsx
A    src/utils/helpers.ts

The LLM sees file names and change types (Modified, Added, Deleted), never your source code.

Can I use this with private repositories?

Yes! Since only file names are sent (not code), it's safe for private repos. For extra security, use Ollama with local models.

How do I switch LLM providers?

Run the setup wizard again:

smart-commit --setup

Or manually:

llm keys set openai          # Switch provider
llm models default gpt-4o    # Change model

Can I customize the commit message format?

Currently, the format is fixed (emoji + subject + optional bullets). You can:

• Use -e flag to edit messages before committing
• Use --dry-run to preview and copy messages
• Change models for different writing styles

Does this work with conventional commits?

The emoji-based format is different from conventional commits (feat:, fix:, etc.). The emojis serve a similar purpose but are more visual. You can manually edit messages to conventional commit format using -e.

What happens if the LLM is down or slow?

• OpenAI/Anthropic/Gemini down: The commit fails with an error. Fix connectivity or switch to Ollama.
• Slow API: The tool waits for a response (usually 2-5 seconds). Use -y flag to speed up workflow once you trust the output.
• Offline: Use Ollama with local models - works completely offline.

Can I use this in CI/CD?

Not recommended. Smart Commit is designed for interactive use with preview/confirmation. For CI/CD, write commit messages in your scripts.

How do I update to the latest version?

npm:

npm update -g @viccalexander/smart-commit

Homebrew:

brew update
brew upgrade smart-commit

Where is my API key stored?

API keys are stored by the llm tool in ~/.config/llm/keys.json. They're never sent anywhere except to your chosen LLM provider.

Can I use multiple API keys?

The llm tool supports one key per provider. To switch between accounts, run llm keys set <provider> to overwrite the stored key.

What if I want to commit without an LLM?

Just use regular git commands:

git add .
git commit -m "Your message"

Smart Commit is optional - it doesn't replace or modify git's behavior.

📝 License

MIT © Vicc Alexander 2026