| name | commit-format |
| description | Use when authoring, amending, squashing, fixup-ing, rebasing, or cherry-picking any git commit message in the pokemax repo — covers subject line, bullet body, backtick rules, and the ban on AI attribution. |
Commit format
Every commit is a subject line plus a bullet body. Measured across the last 60 commits: 188 bullets, zero ending in a period, zero prose paragraphs in a body.
Match git log. It is the specification.
Subject
PMX: prefix, always — repo code, colon, one space, then the subject- Imperative verb first after the prefix —
Add, Drop, Fold, Make, Give
- Sentence case; capitalize the first word after the prefix
- Backtick every identifier, path, script, and package name
- No second prefix — no
feat:, no chore:, no ticket id
- No trailing period
- Target 72 characters including the prefix; the subject body median is 53
Good: PMX: Give the region model one owner in `generations.ts`
Good: PMX: Make `isObtainFile` validate the shape its consumers index
Bad: Give the region model one owner in `generations.ts`
Bad: PMX: feat: refactored the region stuff.
The prefix is on every hand-written commit, version bumps included — PMX: 0.3.4.
(#5) suffixes are appended by GitHub on squash-merge; never type one yourself. Commits made before this convention landed keep their bare subjects.
Body
The body is bullets. Nothing else. No lede, no prose paragraph, no closing summary.
- Every line starts
- or is a continuation
- Start lowercase — unless the first token is an identifier or proper noun
- No trailing period, ever
- Wrap at ~72 characters; indent continuations 2 spaces
- One fact per bullet
PMX: Drop the nullable expansion state from `ObtainRegions`
- `Set<string> | null` existed only because the default region was unknown
until the file loaded — inside `ObtainRegions` it is known at mount
- plain `useState<Set<string>>` with a lazy initializer replaces it
- not routed through `useExpandedRegions` on purpose: its persisted value
would carry one Pokémon's open region onto the next
What the bullets say
The subject says what. The bullets say why, and prove it.
- Lead with the thing that changed, then what happened to it
- Use
— to join a fact to its consequence
- Numbers, not adjectives —
410 lines, ~250 of them static label tables
- Cite verification inline — e.g. verified all 1351 files in
public/obtain/ still pass
- State what was deliberately not done, and why — the
not routed through bullet above
- Name the wrong assumption a fix corrects, not just the fix
Backticks
This repo backticks aggressively. Sister repos do not — do not carry their lighter style here.
Backtick: identifiers, type names, file paths, directories, npm scripts, packages, CSS custom properties and class names, branch names, config keys, literal values.
Writing the message
Use -F - with a quoted heredoc. Backticks inside a double-quoted -m string are executed by the shell.
git add <specific files>
git commit -F - <<'EOF'
PMX: Subject line here
- first bullet
- second bullet
EOF
Hard rules
- Zero AI attribution. No
Co-Authored-By: Claude, no "generated with", no agent or model name anywhere in subject or body.
- One logical change per commit. Unrelated work gets its own commit.
- No bullet-per-changed-file. A file list is not a rationale.
Quick reference
| Element | Rule |
|---|
| Prefix | PMX: — mandatory, every commit |
| Subject | Imperative, sentence case, backticked, no period, ≤72 chars |
| Body form | Bullets only — no prose lines |
| Bullet case | Lowercase, unless it opens with an identifier |
| Bullet period | Never |
| Wrap | ~72 chars, continuations indented 2 spaces |
| Content | Why over what; numbers over adjectives |
| Attribution | None, ever |
