A small Rust CLI that generates conventional commit messages from your Git diffs by calling the OpenAI Chat Completions API. It supports streaming (optional), colorized output, progress spinners, strict filtering, a dry-run + approval workflow, and model tuning knobs (verbosity, reasoning effort, store).

• 🧠 Good messages by default: subject + 3–6 bullets (imperative, concise)
• 🔵 Colorized output (blue commit message), --color auto|always|never
• ⏳ Progress spinners (default on), --no-progress to disable
• 📡 Streaming tokens (--stream) or non-streaming (default)
• ✅ Dry run + approve (--dry-run prompts to commit or abort)
• 🧰 Strict post-filter to keep only header + bullets (--strict)
• 🎛️ Model knobs: --model, --verbosity low|medium|high, --effort minimal|medium|high, --store

# From the project root
cargo install --path .

This installs the binary to ~/.cargo/bin/commitmsg (by default). Make sure ~/.cargo/bin is on your PATH.

# Verify it's on PATH:
echo "$PATH" | tr ':' '\n' | grep -Fx "$HOME/.cargo/bin" || echo '=> Add ~/.cargo/bin to PATH'

# Add to PATH (bash/zsh):
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.cargo/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc   # or ~/.zshrc
source ~/.bashrc                                          # or ~/.zshrc

export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...

Tip: put this in your shell profile (~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc) for persistence.

From any Git repo:

# Generate message from STAGED changes (default)
commitmsg

# Write the message to /tmp/commitmsg.txt and run a dry-run commit, then ask to approve
commitmsg --dry-run

This prints the commit message in blue to STDOUT, and also saves it to:

/tmp/commitmsg.txt

If you approve the dry run, it will commit for real.

git add -A
commitmsg --dry-run
# Review output, press 'y' to approve the real commit

commitmsg --head

commitmsg --stream
commitmsg --stream --dry-run

# Different model
commitmsg --model gpt-4o-mini

# Ask for more verbose thinking/output
commitmsg --verbosity high --effort high

# Ask OpenAI to store the interaction (if supported/configured)
commitmsg --store

# Force colors on (or off)
commitmsg --color always
commitmsg --color never

# Disable spinners (useful for CI)
commitmsg --no-progress

commitmsg --strict

commitmsg --repo /path/to/repo

• Subject: <type>(<optional scope>): <short subject> (≤ 72 chars, no period)
• Blank line
• Bullets: 3–6 concise, imperative lines
• Optional BREAKING CHANGE: line
• The tool post-filters model output to keep only the above.

Example:

refactor(core): enrich workflow logs with structured fields

- add span builder with contextual fields
- include user_id, request_id, phase, run_id in log macros
- await terminal email send; warn on failure
- seed phase shard aggregation for runner phases
- refine SQS routing schema handling

• OPENAI_API_KEY — required. Your OpenAI API key.
• (Optional) Standard proxy variables (HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY) are respected by reqwest.

commitmsg [OPTIONS]

Options:
  -r, --repo <PATH>            Path to repo (default: .)
      --head                   Use last commit (HEAD) instead of staged changes
      --model <NAME>           OpenAI model (default: gpt-5)
      --dry-run                Run `git commit --dry-run` and ask to approve
      --no-progress            Disable progress spinners
      --no-prompt              Don’t ask to approve (useful with --dry-run in CI)
      --strict                 Extra strict filtering (header + bullets only)
      --color <WHEN>           Color: auto|always|never (default: auto)
      --verbosity <LEVEL>      low|medium|high (default: low)
      --effort <LEVEL>         minimal|medium|high (default: minimal)
      --store                  Request the API to store the interaction
      --stream                 Stream tokens live (default: off)
  -h, --help                   Print help
  -V, --version                Print version

• Staged vs HEAD: By default, the tool uses staged changes (git diff --cached). Use --head to summarize the last commit instead.

• Message location: The final message is always written to /tmp/commitmsg.txt so you can reuse it:

  git commit -F /tmp/commitmsg.txt

• CI usage: Disable colors/spinners and don’t prompt:

  commitmsg --no-progress --color never --no-prompt

• Shell piping: The commit message is printed to STDOUT; progress and prompts go to STDERR. Piping commitmsg | pbcopy will copy the message only.

• “OPENAI_API_KEY not set” → export it in your shell:

  export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...

• “not a git repository” → run inside a repo or use --repo /path/to/repo.

• Message seems too short → add --verbosity medium or --verbosity high.

• Model adds fluff → use --strict to clamp to header + bullets.

• Streaming shows weird prefaces → prefer non-stream mode (default), or keep --strict on.

MIT — do whatever you want, no warranty.