| name | re0-git |
| disable-model-invocation | true |
| description | Rewrite a finished commit's message into a clean, handoff-ready form in your own log style, so `git log` alone tells the story. User-invoked: run it after a commit. |
Rewrite a finished commit message so the log hands off on its own — in the author's own voice, not an imposed one.
Goal
Repeated amends and momentum commits leave a message bloated, stale, or padded with trivia. re0-git rewrites the message into a clean version that lets a fresh session continue from git log alone, without reading the diff. It refines what the author already writes. Only the message moves — and timestamps, per the date rule below; the tree never changes.
It is user-invoked — run it once you've decided to commit. A commit-cleanup tool in the agent's reach would bias it toward committing when it shouldn't.
Workflow
- Scope the target — usually
HEAD, sometimes a short unpushed range.
- Read the change (
git show --stat, git diff) and any documented commit rules. Then sample nearby non-target messages: start with 10, stop earlier if the convention is obvious, or expand only until the convention is clear.
- Resolve mixed logs in this order: documented project rules, nearby commits touching the same area, then same-author commits within that convention. Do not average incompatible styles or let one author's habits override the repo.
- Rewrite the message to the commit-economy (below): keep only durable handoff facts, fold supporting edits into the change they serve, and cut anything the diff or tag already proves. Give trivia no bullet of its own.
- Re-commit signed, dates per the rule below. For the tip (
HEAD): git commit --amend -S --date=now — the --date=now is what moves the author date to now; a bare --amend resets only the committer date and leaves the author date stale. For an older commit, keeping its dates: rebuild it — GIT_AUTHOR_DATE/GIT_COMMITTER_DATE git commit-tree <tree> -p <parent> -S -m "<new message>" — then replay every descendant onto the rebuilt commit (a non-tip rewrite is a rebase, not a ref move), or you orphan them.
- Verify and report.
Rules
- Never create or suggest a commit — re0-git only rewrites the message of a commit that already exists. Using it is never a reason to commit.
- Message only — the tree must stay byte-identical (
git diff <old> <new> empty); never edit content in a re0-git pass.
- commit-economy — the commit-message standard this skill enforces: one bullet per real, durable change with supporting edits folded in, nothing the diff or version already proves, no co-author tags, matched to the local log's own shape (sampled above). A step a documented checklist already mandates for any change of this shape (registering a new skill, syncing translated docs after a source edit) is proof the process ran, not a fact about this change — fold it as a trailing clause on the bullet it serves, or drop it if that bullet already implies it; it earns a bullet of its own only when something about how it was done is itself non-obvious. The same bar governs the first draft; re0-git only enforces it on a message that already drifted past it.
- Dates by position; always gpg-signed. The commit you're finalizing —
HEAD — takes both author and committer date = now, because re-cleaning the latest commit is itself continued work. Every older commit (HEAD~1 and back) keeps its original author + committer dates; never restamp the past.
- Never rewrite pushed or shared history without explicit confirmation — it forces a force-push.
Verification
git diff <old-tip> <new-tip> is empty — content unchanged.- Each rewritten commit is gpg-signed (
%G? = G) with dates as intended.
- Re-read
git log alone, diff hidden — if any cut line turns out to be needed to follow the change, restore it.
