This would sound insane to me from two years ago but I have recently started insisting on writing all my own commit messages and pull request descriptions. I do usually have an agent review them for factual accuracy, but not rephrase them.
It slows things down a bit, but in the best possible way. It has helped immensely to improve the depth of my understanding of the agent-generated code. When agents are doing everything its way too easy to “skim” diffs and not really absorb them.
I always prided myself on my technical writing, and commit messages and PRs were a great place to hone that skill. I found that I missed it and my work is better now I’ve reclaimed that part of my old job back.
A big win of LLMs in my book is the absolute reduction of commit messages with just “fixes” or “updates”. Commit messages have become more meaningful and useful, even if far from perfect.
We have one dev who uses LLMs to write the code, but still commits by hand. Most of his messages are of the type above, and none of them are useful.
I can relate to that. Most human commit messages aren't good because the author can't be bothered to write a good one, or doesn't know what a good message is supposed to be, or is bad at writing.
But AI commit messages are still bad. Way too verbose and focused on the wrong level: that of code mechanics. That's just wrong. Messages should focus on the level of intent and design, with the primary purpose being to aid human review. They should include a high level overview of the change, decisions, caveats, information not obvious from reading the diff.
So I wrote a skill that captures these principles and allows the agent to even research past related commits and to ask focused questions in order to uncover the intent rather than guessing and writing a bad one.
Now the AI writes better commit messages than it used to, and even writes better than most humans (who can't be bothered to write a good one). Not better than a good manual message, but you can't have everything.
But sometimes even the good writers are tired or didn't think things through. Being able to compare with the AI's version is still useful.
Here is the skill for anyone interested: <a href="https://github.com/FooBarWidget/ai-skills-and-principles/blob/main/skills/commit-and-pr-messages/SKILL.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/FooBarWidget/ai-skills-and-principles/blo...
Depends on my "documentation principles" skill: <a href="https://github.com/FooBarWidget/ai-skills-and-principles/blob/main/skills/documentation-principles/SKILL.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/FooBarWidget/ai-skills-and-principles/blo...
semiquaver · · focus · HN ↗
It slows things down a bit, but in the best possible way. It has helped immensely to improve the depth of my understanding of the agent-generated code. When agents are doing everything its way too easy to “skim” diffs and not really absorb them.
I always prided myself on my technical writing, and commit messages and PRs were a great place to hone that skill. I found that I missed it and my work is better now I’ve reclaimed that part of my old job back.
LeafItAlone · · focus · HN ↗
We have one dev who uses LLMs to write the code, but still commits by hand. Most of his messages are of the type above, and none of them are useful.
FooBarWidget · · focus · HN ↗
But AI commit messages are still bad. Way too verbose and focused on the wrong level: that of code mechanics. That's just wrong. Messages should focus on the level of intent and design, with the primary purpose being to aid human review. They should include a high level overview of the change, decisions, caveats, information not obvious from reading the diff.
So I wrote a skill that captures these principles and allows the agent to even research past related commits and to ask focused questions in order to uncover the intent rather than guessing and writing a bad one.
Now the AI writes better commit messages than it used to, and even writes better than most humans (who can't be bothered to write a good one). Not better than a good manual message, but you can't have everything.
But sometimes even the good writers are tired or didn't think things through. Being able to compare with the AI's version is still useful.
Here is the skill for anyone interested: <a href="https://github.com/FooBarWidget/ai-skills-and-principles/blob/main/skills/commit-and-pr-messages/SKILL.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/FooBarWidget/ai-skills-and-principles/blo...
Depends on my "documentation principles" skill: <a href="https://github.com/FooBarWidget/ai-skills-and-principles/blob/main/skills/documentation-principles/SKILL.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/FooBarWidget/ai-skills-and-principles/blo...