Skill library / Claude Code

Commit Message skill for Claude Code

Good commit history makes debugging and changelogs painless. This skill reads your staged diff and writes a Conventional Commits message that explains the why, not just the what.

What it's good for

• Keeping history clean on solo projects
• Teams that auto-generate changelogs from commits
• Splitting a large diff into logical commits

How the skill works

1. Run git diff --staged
2. Pick the type (feat, fix, refactor, docs, test, chore) and scope
3. Write a subject in imperative mood, ≤72 characters
4. Add a body explaining motivation and any breaking change
5. Suggest splitting if the diff mixes unrelated changes

Built-in rules

• Never commit without showing the message first
• Mark breaking changes with BREAKING CHANGE: in the footer
• Don't mention file names the diff already makes obvious

Example

You: “commit this”
Result: fix(auth): refresh token before expiry to prevent silent logouts, plus a 2-line body.

SKILL.md template

Save as commit-message/SKILL.md.

---
name: commit-message
description: "Writes Conventional Commits messages from staged changes, with a concise subject and a body explaining why. Use when the user asks to commit, write a commit message, or summarise staged changes."
---

# Commit Message

## Workflow
1. Run git diff --staged
2. Pick the type (feat, fix, refactor, docs, test, chore) and scope
3. Write a subject in imperative mood, ≤72 characters
4. Add a body explaining motivation and any breaking change
5. Suggest splitting if the diff mixes unrelated changes

## Rules
- Never commit without showing the message first
- Mark breaking changes with BREAKING CHANGE: in the footer
- Don't mention file names the diff already makes obvious

How to install in Claude Code

Unzip into .claude/skills/ in your project (or ~/.claude/skills/ for all projects) and invoke it with /skill-name.

Pro tip

If your repo uses ticket IDs, add the pattern to the rules so it appends them automatically.

FAQ

Related skills

• Code Review skill for Claude Code
• API Documentation skill for Claude Code
• Pull Request Description skill for Claude Code