Conventional Commits: Standardizing Git Messages for Optimized Collaboration

Commit Message Standardization: A Readability Challenge

Git commit messages constitute the historical documentation of a project. However, the absence of standardized conventions often generates unreadable histories: laconic messages like “fix”, vague descriptions like “update”, or temporary annotations like “WIP” that persist in the definitive history.

This problem directly affects project maintainability and team collaboration. Conventional Commits provide a structured response to this challenge by defining a specification for standardized commit message writing¹.

Conventional Commits Specification: Structure and Semantics

The Conventional Commits specification¹ defines a standardized format that brings human and machine-readable meaning to commit messages.

Formal Structure

A commit message following the convention follows this syntax:

<type>(scope): <description>

[optional body]

[optional footer]

This structure ensures consistency and facilitates automation of versioning and documentation processes.

Commit Typology and Semantic Implications

Main Commit Types

feat: Introduction of a new feature in the codebase (correlated with MINOR in semantic versioning). Example: feat(auth): add JWT authentication

fix: Bug correction in the codebase (correlated with PATCH in semantic versioning). Example: fix(button): fix crash on button click

docs: Documentation update without impact on production code.

style: Formatting, spacing, or style modifications not affecting business logic.

refactor: Code refactoring without feature addition or bug correction.

test: Addition or modification of unit or integration tests.

Scope and Context

The optional scope specifies the project part affected by the commit, improving traceability:

feat(auth): JWT token validation

This granularity facilitates history navigation and understanding of changes by functional area.

Impact on Automation and Semantic Versioning

Integration with Semantic Versioning

Conventional Commits integrate with semantic versioning (SemVer)² by establishing direct correlations:

• MAJOR: commits with BREAKING CHANGE or ! suffix
• MINOR: feat type commits
• PATCH: fix type commits

Process Automation

This standardization enables automation of several processes³:

• Automatic changelog generation based on commit history
• Automatic version number calculation according to integrated commit types
• CI/CD process triggering according to modification nature
• Release creation with automated documentation

Available Tooling

Tools like semantic-release or standard-version⁴ exploit this convention to fully automate release workflows, eliminating human errors and ensuring version consistency.

Organizational and Collaborative Advantages

Team Communication

Adopting Conventional Commits transforms each commit into a structured information vector. This approach significantly improves communication within development teams⁵ by:

• Clarifying the intention behind each modification
• Facilitating code reviews through better contextualization
• Accelerating understanding when resuming existing projects

Long-term Maintainability

Structuring commit messages constitutes an investment for future project maintainability. It allows teams to:

• Quickly identify regression origins
• Understand functional evolution without exhaustive code analysis
• Facilitate onboarding of new developers

Implementation and Adoption

Integration in Existing Workflows

Adopting Conventional Commits requires a progressive approach⁶:

1. Team training on the specification and its benefits
2. Internal guide definition adapting the convention to project specificities
3. Validation tool setup like commitlint to ensure rule compliance
4. CI/CD process integration to fully exploit automation benefits

Implementation Best Practices

• Imperative messages: use present imperative (“add” rather than “added”)
• Concise descriptions: limit title line to 72 characters maximum
• Detailed body: use commit body to explain the “why” of complex modifications
• Team consistency: maintain uniform terminology for scopes

Conclusion: Towards Living Code Documentation

Conventional Commits go beyond simple formalism to become a structured technical communication tool. This approach transforms Git history into living documentation, facilitating maintenance, automation, and collaboration.

The initial investment in training and tooling quickly translates into measurable productivity gains⁷, particularly on long-term projects where history readability becomes critical.

Adopting this convention is part of a continuous improvement approach to development practices, where each commit contributes to the project’s overall quality.

Sources

1. Conventional Commits Specification - ConventionalCommits.org
2. GIT — Semantic versioning and conventional commits - Medium OpenSight
3. Versioning with Git Tags and Conventional Commits - Software Engineering Institute
4. Standard Version: Automate versioning and CHANGELOG generation - GitHub
5. Commit Like a Pro: A Beginner’s Guide to Conventional Commits - DEV Community
6. 8 Essential Git Best Practices for Dev Teams - Dessign
7. Automate Semantic Versioning with Conventional Commits - Medium JSilvax