Why I still hand write my commit messages

For over a decade, I've been a proponent of writing detailed Git commit messages. I find it a valuable use of my time, and continue to double down on it, even in a world where you can get a Large Language Model (LLM) to write it for you. In the past, I've written about at least 89 strong feelings I have about Git commits, so I'm naturally biased to the benefit of commit messages, but why does this still hold in the current age, where a lot of people are delegating that to an AI agent, if at all? "Why" is better than "what" One of the most important things a commit message should explain is why you're making a given change. Chris Beams' post about writing commit messages is probably one of the more cited blog posts of all time, and is a great resource on this and a number of other important pieces to remember when writing a commit message. Unfortunately a lot of humans, and by extension LLMs, still continue to re-explain what has changed in a given commit. Generally, the "what" is…