commit-forge

A lightweight CLI tool for generating, linting, and creating commits with enforced formatting. Perfect for teams that want consistent commit messages with JIRA integration.

Package Statistics

Metric	Value
Package Size	~16KB (minified single file)
Node.js	>=14.0.0
License	MIT
Main File	dist/cli.js

Features

• 🎯 Generate commit messages with proper formatting
• ✅ Lint commit messages to ensure they follow the format
• 🚀 Interactive commit flow with prompts for missing information
• 🎨 Category selection with beautiful interactive menu
• 🔗 JIRA integration with automatic validation
• 📝 Conventional commit format support

Installation

Global Installation

npm install -g commit-forge

Local Installation

npm install --save-dev commit-forge

Usage

Generate a commit message

commit-forge generate --jira TB-123 --category feat --message "add login" --description "Implement login flow"

Lint a commit message

# From a file
commit-forge lint .git/COMMIT_EDITMSG

# From stdin
echo "[TB-123] ✨ feat: add feature" | commit-forge lint

Interactive commit

commit-forge commit

This will:

1. Check for staged files
2. Prompt for missing information (JIRA ID, category, message, description)
3. Show an interactive category selector
4. Create the commit with the formatted message

With flags (non-interactive)

commit-forge commit --jira TB-123 --category feat --message "add login" --description "Implement login flow"

Using npm scripts

If you have commit-forge installed locally in your project, you can add a commit script to your package.json:

{
	"scripts": {
		"commit": "commit-forge commit"
	}
}

Then use it with:

npm run commit
# or with bun
bun run commit

This will run the interactive commit flow, checking for staged files and prompting for commit details.

Note: The commit script is also available in this package itself. You can use npm run commit or bun run commit in this repository to test the tool.

Commands

• generate - Format and print a commit message
• lint - Validate a commit message file or stdin input
• commit - Prompt for details, ensure staged files, and run git commit

Flags

• --jira, -j - JIRA issue id (e.g., TB-123)
• --category, -c - Category keyword (feat, fix, docs, style, refactor, perf, test, chore)
• --message, -m - Short subject line (<= 72 chars)
• --description, -d - Longer description (use \n for newlines)
• --file, -f - Commit message file path (lint command)
• --json - Output lint result as JSON
• --output, -o - File path to write generated message
• --help, -h - Show help

Allowed Categories

• ✨ feat - New feature
• 🐛 fix - Bug fix
• 📝 docs - Documentation change
• 🎨 style - Code style / formatting
• ♻️ refactor - Refactoring
• ⚡ perf - Performance improvement
• ✅ test - Tests
• 🧹 chore - Chores & maintenance

Commit Format

Commit messages follow this format:

[TB-123] ✨ feat: add feature

Optional longer description here

Configuration

You can customize commit-forge behavior by creating a configuration file in your project root. The tool will automatically look for configuration files in the following order:

1. .commit-forge.json
2. commit-forge.config.json
3. .commit-forge.ts
4. commit-forge.config.ts
5. .commit-forge.js
6. commit-forge.config.js

Configuration Options

Create a .commit-forge.json file in your project root:

{
	"jira": {
		"enabled": true,
		"required": true,
		"allowNoJira": true
	},
	"emoji": {
		"enabled": true
	},
	"subject": {
		"maxLength": 72
	},
	"description": {
		"required": false
	}
}

JIRA Configuration

• jira.enabled (boolean, default: true) - Enable/disable JIRA ID support
• jira.required (boolean, default: true) - Require JIRA ID in commits
• jira.allowNoJira (boolean, default: true) - Allow "NO-JIRA" as a valid value

Example: Disable JIRA completely

{
	"jira": {
		"enabled": false
	}
}

Example: Make JIRA optional (not required)

{
	"jira": {
		"enabled": true,
		"required": false,
		"allowNoJira": true
	}
}

Emoji Configuration

• emoji.enabled (boolean, default: true) - Show emojis in category formatting

Example: Disable emojis

{
	"emoji": {
		"enabled": false
	}
}

Subject Configuration

• subject.maxLength (number, default: 72) - Maximum length for commit message subject line

Example: Change max length to 100 characters

{
	"subject": {
		"maxLength": 100
	}
}

Description Configuration

• description.required (boolean, default: false) - Require description in commits

Example: Require description

{
	"description": {
		"required": true
	}
}

JavaScript Configuration File

You can also use a JavaScript file for more dynamic configuration:

// commit-forge.config.js
module.exports = {
	jira: {
		enabled: process.env.USE_JIRA !== "false",
		required: true,
		allowNoJira: true,
	},
	emoji: {
		enabled: true,
	},
	subject: {
		maxLength: 72,
	},
	description: {
		required: false,
	},
};

TypeScript Configuration File

TypeScript configuration files are also supported! You'll need one of these packages installed:

• ts-node (recommended)
• tsx
• esbuild-register

// commit-forge.config.ts
import type { CommitForgeConfig } from "commit-forge";

const config: CommitForgeConfig = {
	jira: {
		enabled: process.env.USE_JIRA !== "false",
		required: true,
		allowNoJira: true,
	},
	emoji: {
		enabled: true,
	},
	subject: {
		maxLength: 72,
	},
	description: {
		required: false,
	},
};

export default config;

Or using CommonJS syntax:

// commit-forge.config.ts
module.exports = {
	jira: {
		enabled: process.env.USE_JIRA !== "false",
		required: true,
		allowNoJira: true,
	},
	emoji: {
		enabled: true,
	},
	subject: {
		maxLength: 72,
	},
	description: {
		required: false,
	},
};

Git Hook Integration

You can use this tool as a git commit-msg hook to automatically validate commit messages:

# Create the hook
echo '#!/bin/sh
commit-forge lint "$1"' > .git/hooks/commit-msg

# Make it executable
chmod +x .git/hooks/commit-msg

License

MIT

Contributors

• Ayaan Raza - Creator
• Sawan Kumar - Collaborator