(thanks to Nutlopes for developing most of this, but I wanted to keep it updated with newer models and some quality of life changes)

Setup

The minimum supported version of Node.js is the latest v14. Check your Node.js version with node --version.

1. Install comai:

   npm install -g comai

2. Retrieve your API key from OpenAI

   Note: If you haven't already, you'll have to create an account and set up billing.

3. Set the key so comai can use it:

   comai config set OPENAI_KEY=<your token>

   This will create a .comai file in your home directory.

Upgrading

Check the installed version with:

comai --version

If it's not the latest version, run:

npm update -g comai

Usage

CLI mode

You can call comai directly to generate a commit message for your staged changes:

git add <files...>
comai

comai passes down unknown flags to git commit, so you can pass in commit flags.

For example, you can stage all changes in tracked files with as you commit:

comai --all # or -a

Generate multiple recommendations

Sometimes the recommended commit message isn't the best so you want it to generate a few to pick from. You can generate multiple commit messages at once by passing in the --generate <i> flag, where 'i' is the number of generated messages:

comai --generate <i> # or -g <i>

Warning: this uses more tokens, meaning it costs more.

Generating Conventional Commits

If you'd like to generate Conventional Commits, you can use the --type flag followed by conventional. This will prompt comai to format the commit message according to the Conventional Commits specification:

comai --type conventional # or -t conventional

This feature can be useful if your project follows the Conventional Commits standard or if you're using tools that rely on this commit format.

Git hook

You can also integrate comai with Git via the prepare-commit-msg hook. This lets you use Git like you normally would, and edit the commit message before committing.

Install

In the Git repository you want to install the hook in:

comai hook install

Uninstall

In the Git repository you want to uninstall the hook from:

comai hook uninstall

Usage

1. Stage your files and commit:

   git add <files...>
   git commit # Only generates a message when it's not passed in

   If you ever want to write your own message instead of generating one, you can simply pass one in: git commit -m "My message"

2. Comai will generate the commit message for you and pass it back to Git. Git will open it with the configured editor for you to review/edit it.

3. Save and close the editor to commit!

CLI Options

You can set persistent CLI options so you don't have to specify flags every time you run comai.

Managing CLI Options

Show current options

comai options
# or
comai options show

Set options

comai options set all=true
comai options set generate=3
comai options set type=conventional
comai options set exclude=package-lock.json,dist/

Get specific options

comai options get all
comai options get generate

Clear options

comai options clear all
comai options clear generate

Available Options

• all: true|false - Automatically stage all tracked files (equivalent to --all flag)
• exclude: file1,file2 - Comma-separated list of files to exclude (equivalent to --exclude flag)
• generate: 1-5 - Number of commit messages to generate (equivalent to --generate flag)
• type: conventional - Type of commit message format (equivalent to --type flag)

How it works

Once you set options, comai will use them as defaults every time you run it. CLI flags will always override stored options.

For example:

# Set preferences
comai options set all=true generate=2

# This will use your stored preferences
comai

# This will override the stored generate setting for this run only
comai --generate 5

Configuration

Reading a configuration value

To retrieve a configuration option, use the command:

comai config get <key>

For example, to retrieve the API key, you can use:

comai config get OPENAI_KEY

You can also retrieve multiple configuration options at once by separating them with spaces:

comai config get OPENAI_KEY generate

Setting a configuration value

To set a configuration option, use the command:

comai config set <key>=<value>

For example, to set the API key, you can use:

comai config set OPENAI_KEY=<your-api-key>

You can also set multiple configuration options at once by separating them with spaces, like

comai config set OPENAI_KEY=<your-api-key> generate=3 locale=en

Options

OPENAI_KEY

Required

The OpenAI API key. You can retrieve it from OpenAI API Keys page.

locale

Default: en

The locale to use for the generated commit messages. Consult the list of codes in: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes.

generate

Default: 1

The number of commit messages to generate to pick from.

Note, this will use more tokens as it generates more results.

proxy

Set a HTTP/HTTPS proxy to use for requests.

To clear the proxy option, you can use the command (note the empty value after the equals sign):

comai config set proxy=

model

Default: gpt-5

The Chat Completions (/v1/chat/completions) model to use. Consult the list of models available in the OpenAI Documentation.

Tip: The default model is now gpt-5. You can also use gpt-4 or other models if needed. Check out OpenAI's website to learn more about model capabilities and pricing.

timeout

The timeout for network requests to the OpenAI API in milliseconds.

Default: 10000 (10 seconds)

comai config set timeout=20000 # 20s

max-length

The maximum character length of the generated commit message.

Default: 50

comai config set max-length=100

type

Default: "" (Empty string)

The type of commit message to generate. Set this to "conventional" to generate commit messages that follow the Conventional Commits specification:

comai config set type=conventional

You can clear this option by setting it to an empty string:

comai config set type=

How it works

This CLI tool runs git diff to grab all your latest code changes, sends them to OpenAI's GPT-5, then returns the AI generated commit message.

Video coming soon where I rebuild it from scratch to show you how to easily build your own CLI tools powered by AI.

Maintainers

• Ryan Vogel: @R44VC0RP

Contributing

If you want to help fix a bug or implement a feature in Issues, checkout the Contribution Guide to learn how to setup and test the project