Git commit messages are supposed to be a project’s logbook: who changed what, when, and why. But when deadlines, production alerts, and coffee take turns showing up, they easily become the most emotionally stable outlet for a programmer.

The most classic category is the results-oriented type: fix, fix again, final fix, final final fix. Like a series, they remind latecomers: this problem isn’t really over, it just isn’t throwing errors for now. Some people also write works on my machine; though honest, it’s essentially leaving behind a landmark in a collaborative project that requires archaeology.

The second category is the refuses-to-explain type: don't touch, magic, idk why. Their humor comes from a simple fear: the author knows this change is fragile but has no time to write down why. What’s truly terrifying isn’t that the information is short—it’s that half a year later, when git blame points back at yourself, you can’t even understand the you from back then.

The script below can reproduce a very vivid stretch of commit history in a temporary directory; after running it, decide whether you still want to leave final-final for your future colleagues:

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#!/usr/bin/env bash
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set -euo pipefail
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repo="$(mktemp -d)"
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cd "$repo"
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git init -q
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git config user.name "Coffee Developer"
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git config user.email "coffee@example.test"
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printf 'feature=true\n' > app.conf
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git add app.conf
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git commit -qm 'add feature'
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printf 'feature=false\n' > app.conf
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git commit -am 'fix'
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git commit --allow-empty -qm 'fix again'
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git commit --allow-empty -qm 'final final fix, do not touch'
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git log --oneline

Jokes aside, commit messages are actually low-cost team documentation. A good commit doesn’t need to be an essay—it just needs to cover two things: what changed and why it changed. For example, changing fix login to fix(auth): refresh expired session before retrying request saves one round of guessing when troubleshooting.

If you really want to keep a bit of humanity, you can put the humor outside the body: keep the title clear, explain the context in the body, and occasionally add a line like “Reason for fix: the test environment finally decided to cooperate.” This way you don’t sacrifice searchability, and the version history feels a little less cold.