Crafting an inline prompt for commit message generation

[taketwo]

I've played around with the built-in /commit prompt and got mostly positive impressions about the quality of the generated messages. Encouraged by these results, I'm now considering how to incorporate it into my Git workflow. Given that the prompt is configured to use the chat strategy, the only possible flow seems to be:

• Stage changes
• Trigger /commit from the action palette (or using a keymap)
• In the opened chat buffer, press Ctrl+S to send the pre-populated request
• Yank the generated commit message
• Close chat buffer
• Open commit message editing buffer
• Paste the generated commit message

I find it awkward. Ideally, I'd like to:

• Stage changes
• Open commit message editing buffer
• Trigger commit message generation and get the output inserted directly into the gitcommit buffer

Or, even better:

• Stage changes
• Open commit message editing buffer that automatically gets pre-populated with a generated commit message

I've found two discussion threads (one, two) about this topic, but none of them got any traction. I also did not find any discussion of Git commit flow in the documentation.

Therefore, I'm trying to craft my own prompt. So far I have the following:

      prompt_library = {
        ['Commit Message'] = {
          strategy = 'inline',
          description = 'Generate a commit message',
          opts = {
            short_name = 'commit_message',
            auto_submit = true,
            placement = 'replace',
          },
          prompts = {
            {
              role = 'user',
              content = function()
                return string.format(
                  [[You are an expert at following the Conventional Commit specification. Given the git diff listed below, please generate a commit message for me:

` ` `diff
%s
` ` `

When unsure about the module names to use in the commit message, you can refer to the last 20 commit messages in this repository:

` ` `
%s
` ` `

Output only the commit message without any explanations and follow-up suggestions.
]],
                  vim.fn.system('git diff --no-ext-diff --staged'),
                  vim.fn.system('git log --pretty=format:"%s" -n 20')
                )
              end,
              opts = {
                contains_code = true,
              },
            },
          },
        },
      },

The prompt uses:

• inline strategy to avoid opening a chat buffer
• auto_submit such that I don't need to press anything after the prompt was triggered
• before placement to ensure the generated message is inserted on top
• previous commit messages are included in the prompt to give more context and maintain consistent module names
• explicit request to only output the message in the prompt

With this prompt I'm getting close to my ideal flow. The only annoyance is that after the generated message is placed in the gitcommit buffer, the diff view is opened and I have to press ga to accept the message. I'd rather prefer to have it inserted unconditionally. (If I don't like it at all, I'll simply press u to undo.) Unfortunately, I did not find any option to disable this behavior and if I located the right piece of code, then this is clearly unconditional.

So I guess my questions are:

• Am I using the right tools for the job or is there some other approach in CodeCompanion that I've overlooked?
• If this is the right way, are there any other improvements I can incorporate into this prompt?
• Is there an option to disable diff + accept/reject behavior that I've overlooked?
• If not, then is this something we can consider adding?

[GPetrites]

I was just struggling with this as well. I found the following comment which mentions a placement of "before|false". I have no idea what exactly that mean, but it seems to do the trick.

#92 (comment)

[olimorris]

This is in reference to where an inline prompt can be placed. The inline docs are updated to explain this.

[taketwo]

Thanks for the pointer, that does the trick indeed!

[meijieru]

Is this a more sensible default than generating commit messages in chat? @olimorris

[taketwo]

I think the answer depends on your Git workflow and how much it is integrated with Neovim. In my case, commit message editing happens in a Neovim buffer, so it's very natural to have a keymap there that generates and directly inserts a commit message. If, however, you use an external tool to perform Git operations, it looks sensible to have messages generated inside a chat and then copy/pasted into the external tool.