Git Craft

This is a submission for the "Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 2: Side Hustle" (https://dev.to/challenges/hacktoberfest-week2-2026-10-12)

What I Built

Git Craft: A Little AI Assistant for Better Git Commits 🛠️

Writing code is one thing. Writing a good commit message for it is another.

Sometimes, after making several changes, I find myself spending more time figuring out how to describe them in a commit message than I expected. That small frustration inspired Git Craft, a Python command-line tool that uses AI to draft concise Git commit messages from your changes.

Instead of switching to a browser-based AI chatbot, you can run Git Craft directly in your terminal.

Here's what it does:

• Examines staged changes, or unstaged tracked changes when nothing is staged.
• Uses an Ollama model to generate a concise commit message.
• Includes recent commit subjects to provide additional context.
• Prints the suggested message so you can review it before committing.

My goal is to make the everyday Git workflow a little smoother, especially for developers who prefer working in the terminal.

Who could pay for it?

Git Craft is currently an open-source project, not a paid product. Its potential audience includes individual developers, students, and small development teams who want a more convenient commit-message workflow.

A future paid offering could focus on team-specific commit conventions, shared configurations, or integrations. These are possible future directions, not existing features.

Demo

GitHub repository: "ssannssarr/git-craft" (https://github.com/ssannssarr/git-craft)

Git Craft is a CLI tool, so a short terminal recording showing a staged change and its generated commit message would make a great demo.

Code

Explore the source code and contribute:

"GitHub: ssannssarr/git-craft" (https://github.com/ssannssarr/git-craft)

Built with Python and distributed under the MIT License.

How I Built It

I built Git Craft as a Python CLI utility around Ollama's local model-serving interface.

The basic workflow is straightforward:

1. Git Craft inspects the current repository's changes.
2. It gathers the relevant diff and recent commit subjects for context.
3. It sends that information to a model through an OpenAI-compatible API endpoint.
4. The model drafts a commit message, which Git Craft prints for me to review.

The default configuration uses a local Ollama server and the "llama3" model identifier. The base URL and model can also be configured, allowing the tool to adapt to different compatible endpoints.

I wanted to explore how open-source AI could become a practical part of an everyday developer workflow, rather than just another chatbot interface.

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

For a tool like Git Craft, open innovation matters because developers should have choices about how their AI tools work.

Using Ollama makes it possible to run a compatible model locally instead of depending entirely on a hosted AI API. This gives developers more control over their model choice, deployment, and where inference happens.

Open-source development also lets other developers inspect the implementation, adapt the workflow, suggest improvements, and contribute features that fit their own needs.

Git Craft is a small project, but it reflects something I value about open innovation:

AI becomes more useful when developers can experiment with it, understand it, and build on top of it.

My Agent Session

I haven't included an agent-session recording in this submission. If I capture a session using DevRelay, I'll add it here.

Prize Categories

Git Craft is a Python CLI tool that uses Ollama for AI-powered commit-message generation. I'll select only the official prize categories for which the project meets the stated requirements.

I don't want to claim eligibility for partner-specific awards without implementing the required integrations or confirming that the project meets their criteria.