commit

Writes the commit message for you — the note that goes with a saved change — in whatever style the project already uses, by reading its own recent history first.

WHEN TO USE

SCOPE

USE FOR

Be told exactly what happened when a pre-commit check blocked or rewrote your files.
Have unstaged changes staged and committed together when nothing is already staged.
Get a subject line and body drafted from the actual diff instead of writing one yourself.

This is a saved copy of the skill's SKILL.md instructions. It may differ from the upstream file or the version you install.

In this document (3)

Commit Changes

Help the user commit code changes with a well-crafted commit message derived from the diff, following the conventions already established in the repository.

Guidelines

Never amend existing commits without asking.
Never force-push or push without explicit user approval.
Never skip pre-commit hooks (do not use --no-verify).
Never skip signing commits (do not use --no-gpg-sign).
Never revert, reset, or discard user changes unless the user explicitly asked for that.
Check for obvious secrets or generated artifacts that should not be committed. If something looks risky - ask the user.
When in doubt about staging, convention, or message content — ask the user.

Workflow

1. Discover the repository's commit convention

Run the following to sample recent commits and the user's own commits:

# Recent repo commits (for overall style)
git log --oneline -20

# User's recent commits (for personal style)
git log --oneline --author="$(git config user.name)" -10

Analyse the output to determine the commit message convention used in the repository (e.g. Conventional Commits, Gitmoji, ticket-prefixed, free-form). All generated messages must follow the detected convention.

2. Check repository status

git status --short

If there are no changes (working tree clean, nothing staged), inform the user and stop.
If there are staged changes, proceed with those and do not stage any unstaged changes.
If there are only unstaged changes, stage everything (git add -A), and proceed with those.

3. Generate the commit message

Obtain the full diff of what will be committed:

git diff --cached --stat
git diff --cached

Using the diff and the commit convention detected in step 1, draft a commit message with:

A subject line (≤ 72 characters) that summarises the change, following the repository's convention.
An optional body that explains why the change was made, only when the diff is non-trivial.
Reference issue/ticket numbers when they appear in branch names or related context.
Focus on the intent of the change, not a file-by-file inventory.

4. Commit

Construct the git commit command with the generated message.

Execute the commit:

git commit -m "<subject>" -m "<body>"

5. Confirm

After the commit:

Run git status --short to confirm the commit completed.
Run git log --oneline -1 to show the new commit.
If pre-commit hooks changed files or blocked the commit, summarize exactly what happened.
If hooks rewrote files after the commit attempt, do not amend automatically. Tell the user what changed and ask whether they want you to stage and commit those follow-up edits.

Local tool required

1 FOR YOU

01
Work inside a local git repository
Have Git installed and run this from within a git repository with a commit history, since the skill inspects git log, git status, and git diff and runs git commit on your behalf.

One of 31 skills in the microsoft/vscode package — works on its own.

Run this outside your AI tool, using Node.js 22.20.0 or newer. Skills CLI 1.7.2 skips skill selection; prompts cancel installation without an interactive terminal. If choosing Project when asked about installation scope, open your project's folder before running this.

Install checklist

Check selected tools if a picker appears; Claude Code may be unchecked under Additional agents. ↑/↓ moves, Space toggles selections, Enter confirms.
Without a tool picker, check Installing to: for your intended tool. Stop if it names a different tool.
If asked, choose Symlink (Recommended) for shared files or Copy to all agents for separate copies; review the summary before confirming installation.
Install the find-skills skill? defaults to Yes, adding another skill for all projects. Choose No if you don't want that extra installation.

Skills CLI 1.7.2 sends install data to skills.sh by default, including the source, skill names, target tools and file details; GitHub sources are reported only when GitHub confirms the repository is public, while other remote sources can also be reported. Confirmed-public GitHub sources also trigger a security-audit request. Before installing, set the environment variable DO_NOT_TRACK=1 or DISABLE_TELEMETRY=1 to disable both.

npx skills add microsoft/vscode --skill "commit" --full-depth

After installing for Claude Code, open it in the installation project if you chose Project; Global makes the skill available across projects on this computer. Once Claude Code loads the skill, its description helps Claude decide when to use it.

If installation created a top-level skills folder that did not exist when your Claude Code session started, run /reload-skills in that session. Run it again after later changes in that folder.

View on GitHub

The repository is licensed under MIT — use, modification, and redistribution are allowed under that license’s terms.

View the repository’s license file on GitHub →