Skip to content

Git Commit Message Standard

Taken from conventional commits


The Conventional Commits specification is a lightweight convention on top of commit messages. It provides an easy set of rules for creating an explicit commit history; which makes it easier to write automated tools on top of. This convention dovetails with SemVer, by describing the features, fixes, and breaking changes made in commit messages.

The commit message should be structured as follows:

<type>[optional scope]: <description>

[optional body]

[optional footer(s)]
The commit contains the following structural elements, to communicate intent to the consumers of your library:

  3. BREAKING CHANGE: a commit that has a footer BREAKING CHANGE:, or appends a ! after the type/scope, introduces a breaking API change (correlating with MAJOR in semantic versioning). A BREAKING CHANGE can be part of commits of any type.
  4. types other than fix: and feat: are allowed, for example @commitlint/config-conventional (based on the the Angular convention) recommends build:, chore:, ci:, docs:, style:, refactor:, perf:, test:, and others.
  5. footers other than BREAKING CHANGE: may be provided and follow a convention similar to git trailer format.

Additional types are not mandated by the conventional commits specification, and have no implicit effect in semantic versioning (unless they include a BREAKING CHANGE).

A scope may be provided to a commit’s type, to provide additional contextual information and is contained within parenthesis, e.g., feat(parser): add ability to parse arrays.


feat: allow provided config object to extend other configs
BREAKING CHANGE: `extends` key in config file is now used for extending other config files

Commit message with ! to draw attention to breaking change

refactor!: drop support for Node 6
refactor!: drop support for Node 6
BREAKING CHANGE: refactor to use JavaScript features not available in Node 6.

Commit message with no body

docs: correct spelling of CHANGELOG

Commit message with scope

feat(lang): add polish language

Commit message with multi-paragraph body and multiple footers

fix: correct minor typos in code

see the issue for details

on typos fixed.

Reviewed-by: Z
Refs #133

Last update: September 18, 2020