What is commit-guidelines?

A set of rules for writing commit messages and semantic version numbers, where message types indicate the size of a release change.

Choosing commit types and formats for bug fixes, features, documentation, refactoring, tests, maintenance, and CI changes.

It reduces accidental major-version releases by clarifying which commit labels produce patch, minor, or major version bumps.

commit-guidelines — Cursor rule by tecnomanu

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods

npx agentmods add rules/tecnomanu/agent-rules-kit/commit-guidelines

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tecnomanu/agent-rules-kit

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 646 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 646 The same file — it is already loaded in full.

Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5	$0.00646	$0.00646
Opus 5	$0.00323	$0.00323
Sonnet 5	$0.00129	$0.00129
Haiku 4.5	$0.00065	$0.00065

Measured yesterday against content hash d4adcff1687c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

commit-guidelines scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.cursor/rules/commit-guidelines.mdc · 92 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 92 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Commit Guidelines - CRITICAL VERSION CONTROL

⚠️ CRITICAL WARNING - BREAKING CHANGES

NEVER use BREAKING CHANGE: in commit messages unless it's a REAL breaking change that requires users to modify their code!

The project uses semantic-release which automatically:

fix: → PATCH version (2.4.2 → 2.4.3)
feat: → MINOR version (2.4.2 → 2.5.0)
BREAKING CHANGE: → MAJOR version (2.4.2 → 3.0.0) ← AVOID THIS!

Commit Format

<type>: <emoji> <description>

[optional body]

[optional footer - NO BREAKING CHANGE unless absolutely necessary]

Allowed Types

For Version Bumps:

fix: 🐛 - Bug fixes (PATCH)
feat: ✨ - New features (MINOR)

For No Version Bump:

docs: 📝 - Documentation changes
style: 🎨 - Code formatting, styling
refactor: ♻️ - Code refactoring
test: ✅ - Adding tests
chore: 🔧 - Maintenance tasks
ci: 🚀 - CI/CD changes

Examples

✅ CORRECT:

# Minor feature (will be 2.4.2 → 2.5.0)
git commit -m "feat: ✨ add IDE selector integration"

# Bug fix (will be 2.4.2 → 2.4.3)
git commit -m "fix: 🐛 correct backup logic for single files"

# No version bump
git commit -m "docs: 📝 update README with new examples"

❌ WRONG:

# This creates MAJOR version bump (3.0.0)!
git commit -m "feat: ✨ add IDE selector

BREAKING CHANGE: Removed install command"

When IS a Breaking Change?

Only use BREAKING CHANGE: when:

API changes that break existing code
Removing public functions/methods
Changing function signatures
Removing CLI flags that users rely on
Changing default behavior that breaks existing workflows

Current Project Status

Current version: 3.0.1 (due to incorrect BREAKING CHANGE usage)
Going forward: Use only fix: and feat:
Avoid: BREAKING CHANGE: unless absolutely necessary

AI Assistant Guidelines

When making commits as "Agent AI":

Always use --author="Agent AI <[email protected]>"
Prefer fix: over feat: when in doubt
Never use BREAKING CHANGE: without explicit user confirmation
Keep commit messages concise and descriptive

Read the full file on GitHub · 92 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

yesterday First seen · 92 lines · 646 tokens per session scan A d4adcff1687c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

commit-guidelines is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository tecnomanu/agent-rules-kit (35 stars, last pushed 11mo ago), licensed ISC. It adds 646 tokens to every session, about $0.0032 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Debugging Git and workflow Testing

commit-guidelines