commit-format

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