commit-messages

A workflow for writing or reviewing Git commit messages. A commit message briefly records the purpose of a saved change in a code repository.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when writing commit messages, reviewing staged changes, summarising commits, or wording commits for a pull request.
Why use it?
It makes the change history easier for reviewers and future developers to understand by focusing each message on the main user-visible outcome.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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 skills/crypticswarm/swarmforge/commit-messages
Any agent
npx skills add CrypticSwarm/Swarmforge --skill commit-messages
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/CrypticSwarm/Swarmforge

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 40 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,478 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00040 $0.01478
Opus 5 $0.00020 $0.00739
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00296
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00148

Measured yesterday against content hash 4015721d06cb, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

commit-messages 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.

skills/commit-messages/SKILL.md · 194 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 194 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Commit Messages

Use this workflow whenever you need to write or review a Git commit message.

Response discipline: When fulfilling this skill, output only the commit message text (subject line plus optional body) and nothing else.

Agent workflow

Aim for messages that help a reviewer (often future you) understand intent.

  1. Identify the user-visible intent (what changes when applied).
  2. If the diff includes multiple changes, pick the primary feature/outcome.
  3. Draft an imperative subject that leads with that primary feature.
    • Heuristic: Verb + user-facing object + benefit
  4. Add a body to capture secondary context (enablers, constraints, risk).
  5. Ensure the commits in a PR "tell a story" (each subject advances it).
  6. Re-check for clarity without reading the diff.

Format

Subject line (first line)

  • Capitalize the first word.
  • Keep it short: aim for 50 characters or less.
  • Lead with the primary user-visible feature/outcome.
    • Prefer: Persist session data between runs
    • Avoid: Prepare host dirs for Docker run
  • Use the imperative mood (describe what the commit does when applied):
    • Good: Add caching to user lookup
    • Bad: Added caching to user lookup
    • Bad: Adds caching to user lookup
  • No trailing period.

Blank line

  • Always put a blank line after the subject.
  • Omit the body entirely if it adds no value, but keep the blank line rule when a body exists.

Body (optional)

  • Wrap paragraphs to ~72 columns.
  • Focus on why and impact (rationale, constraints, tradeoffs, risk).
  • Use the body for secondary details (enabling work, implementation notes, migration, risk) so the subject can stay feature-first.
  • Prefer intent and constraints over a narration of the diff.
  • Answer at least one of:
    • Why was this necessary?
    • What behavior changed (user-visible or system-level)?
    • What alternatives were considered and rejected?
    • What risks or follow-ups exist?
  • Link to relevant context when available (issue/PR/ticket IDs).
  • Separate paragraphs with blank lines.

Read the full file on GitHub · 194 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.

  1. yesterday First seen · 194 lines · 40 tokens per session scan A 4015721d06cb

Subscribe to this mod's changes

commit-messages is a skill published in the GitHub repository CrypticSwarm/Swarmforge (2 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 40 tokens to every session and 1,478 once invoked, about $0.0002 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 2026-08-31.

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