smartcommit

Overview

Smartcommit is a lightweight, AI-powered CLI tool that generates short Conventional Commits–style messages from your staged Git changes. It reads your staged diff, sends it to Groq’s chat completions API, and then prompts you to confirm and run the corresponding git commit -m command. This section covers everything you need to install and configure smartcommit on your machine.

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smartcommit reads the current git diff, sends it to an LLM, and proposes a concise commit message following the Conventional Commits format.

Installation

Install globally:

npm install -g @sidhuachary/smartcommit

1. Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js >= 18
• npm
• Git

smartcommit shells out to git diff --cached to read your staged changes and to git commit -m to create the commit. Ensure the git command is available in your $PATH:

Local (Dev) Installation

To add smartcommit as a development dependency in your project:

npm install --save-dev smartcommit

Then invoke it via npx:

npx smartcommit

Installation from Source

If you prefer to run directly from the cloned repository:

git clone https://github.com/SidhuAchary02/smartcommit.git
cd smartcommit
npm install

This installs the following runtime dependencies as declared in package.json:

• chalk
• commander
• dotenv
• groq-sdk

Project Structure and Packaging

• Entry point: ./src/cli.js

Exported as the smartcommit executable via the bin field .

• Source code: All implementation files live under src/:- src/cli.js – CLI orchestration

• src/git.js – Git diff retrieval

• src/ai.js – AI completion integration

• Package contents: Only the src/ directory is included in the published npm package, as specified by:

  "files": [
    "src"
  ]

• Environment variables:

smartcommit uses dotenv/config to load GROQ_API_KEY from a local .env file if present. Ensure you set:

  export GROQ_API_KEY=your_api_key_here

Verifying Installation

After installation, confirm that all tools are available:

node --version    # should be >=18
npm --version
git --version
smartcommit --help

If everything is configured correctly, smartcommit --help will display usage instructions and available options.

Quickstart

Follow these steps to generate and apply a commit message for your staged changes.

1. Stage Your Changes

Use Git to add your modifications to the index:

git add .

2. Run smartcommit

smartcommit

3. Handle “No staged changes”

If you haven’t staged anything, smartcommit will detect an empty diff and exit immediately:

No staged changes found.

4. View the Suggested Commit Message

When staged changes exist, smartcommit contacts the AI service and prints:

Suggested commit message:

<your-proposed-message>

5. Confirm or Cancel

You’ll be prompted:

Use this commit? (y/n):

– Type y and press Enter to commit with the suggested message.

– Type n and press Enter to cancel without committing.

Example Session

$ git add src/parser.js
$ smartcommit

Suggested commit message:

feat(parser): support recursive include statements

Use this commit? (y/n): y
[master 1a2b3c4] feat(parser): support recursive include statements
 1 file changed, 25 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
✅ Commit created.

Commit Style

The generated message follows Conventional Commits:

Examples:

• feat(api): add user authentication endpoint
• fix(cli): handle empty git diff
• docs(readme): update installation instructions
• refactor(core): simplify diff parser