Usage¶

Overview¶

Thecommit command provides an interactive way to create structured commits. Use either:

• cz commit
• cz c (shortcut)

By default, Commitizen uses conventional commits, but you can customize the commit rules to match your project's needs. See thecustomization guide for details.

Basic Usage¶

Interactive Commit Creation¶

Simply runcz commit in your terminal to start the interactive commit creation process. The command will guide you through creating a properly formatted commit message according to your configured rules.

Writing Messages to File¶

You can save the generated commit message to a file using:

czcommit--write-message-to-fileCOMMIT_MSG_FILE

This can be combined with--dry-run to only write the message without creating a commit. This is particularly useful forautomatically preparing commit messages.

Advanced Features¶

Git Command Options¶

You can pass any git commit options using the-- syntax:

czcommit<commitizen-args>--<git-cli-args># Examples:czc--dry-run---a-S# Stage all changes and sign the commitczc-a---n# Stage all changes and skip the pre-commit and commit-msg hooks

Retry¶

• Usecz commit --retry to reuse the last commit message after a failed commit attempt
• Setretry_after_failure: true in your configuration to automatically retry
• Usecz commit --no-retry to force a new commit message prompt

Message Length Control¶

Control the length of your commit messages using the-l or--message-length-limit option:

czcommit-l72# Limits message length to 72 characters

Technical Notes¶

For platform compatibility, thecommit command disables ANSI escaping in its output. This means pre-commit hooks coloring will be deactivated as discussed incommitizen-tools/commitizen#417.