git-agent-0.2.0 is not a library.

git-agent

git-agent writes git commit messages for your changes using a local LLM served through an OpenAI-compatible API (LM Studio, Ollama, llama.cpp, vLLM, or a hosted provider). You review each proposed message, then commit it, edit it, regenerate it, or tell the model what to change.

Why I made git-agent

I made git-agent mainly to get the commit message generation from IntelliJ IDEA without running IDEA. IDEA uses nearly 3-4 GB of RAM, and I need that memory for running local language models. git-agent also has stronger automation features, for use in pipelines or with lightweight code editors.

Install

cargo install --path . --locked

This builds an optimized binary in target/release/ and copies it to ~/.cargo/bin/ (or $CARGO_HOME/bin/). Because the binary is called git-agent, git also runs it as git agent.

If you installed Rust with Homebrew or a Linux package manager

~/.cargo/bin must be on your PATH. rustup adds it for you, but Homebrew and Linux package managers don't, so add it yourself, for example in ~/.zshrc:

export PATH="$HOME/.cargo/bin:$PATH"

Usage

git agent                  # describe staged changes, then review
git agent --all            # stage everything (including untracked files) first
git agent -H "fixes #42"   # give the model extra context
git agent --commit         # commit right away, no review
git agent --push           # review, then push after committing
git agent --commit --push  # commit and push, no review
git agent --raw            # print just the message, e.g. for `| git commit -F -`
git agent -- --signoff     # pass extra arguments to `git commit`

If you have staged changes, git-agent describes and commits only those. If nothing is staged, it describes all changes to tracked files and commits them with git commit --all. Untracked files are left out unless you use --all.

After git-agent generates a message, you choose what to do with it:

Key	Action
`c`	Commit with this message
`p`	Commit with this message, then push
`e`	Open it in your git editor (`GIT_EDITOR`, `core.editor`, `VISUAL`, `EDITOR`)
`r`	Generate a new message
`f`	Tell the model what to change, e.g. `f shorter, and mention the CLI flags`
`q`	Quit without committing

If git commit fails (for example, because a hook rejects it), git-agent saves the message to .git/GIT_AGENT_MSG so you can reuse it with git commit --file .git/GIT_AGENT_MSG.

Pushing runs a plain git push, so it works with GitHub or any other remote and uses your existing git credentials. The first time you push a branch that has no upstream, git-agent sets one: it uses remote.pushDefault if you've configured it, otherwise your only remote, otherwise origin. If the repository has no remote yet, create one on GitHub with gh repo create --source . --push. If the push fails, the commit is kept; fix the problem and run git push.

Before pushing, git-agent fetches from the remote. If the remote has commits you don't have, such as a file you edited on GitHub, git-agent lists them and rebases your commit on top of them. That keeps the history linear and leaves the remote commits in place. The review menu asks before rebasing; --commit --push rebases without asking. Uncommitted changes are set aside during the rebase and restored afterwards.

If your commit conflicts with the remote commits, git-agent cancels the rebase and leaves your branch as it was. Run git pull --rebase, resolve the conflicts, and git push. git-agent never force-pushes.

Configuration

Settings come from these sources, and later ones override earlier ones:

Built-in defaults
The config file: ~/.config/git-agent/config.toml (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git-agent/config.toml)
Environment variables
Command-line flags

git agent config init       # write a commented config file with the defaults
git agent config show       # print the effective settings
git agent models            # list models on the server; * marks the configured one

Key	Flag	Environment variable	Default
`base_url`	`--base-url`	`GIT_AGENT_BASE_URL`	`http://localhost:1234/v1`
`model`	`-m`, `--model`	`GIT_AGENT_MODEL`	`google/gemma-4-e4b`
`api_key`	`--api-key`	`GIT_AGENT_API_KEY`	none
`temperature`	`-t`, `--temperature`		`0.4`
`timeout_secs`			`300`
`max_diff_chars`			`16000`
`exclude`			common lockfiles
`system_prompt`			Conventional Commits instructions
(file location)	`--config`	`GIT_AGENT_CONFIG`	see above

To switch models for a single run:

git agent -m qwen/qwen3-8b
GIT_AGENT_BASE_URL=http://localhost:11434/v1 git agent -m llama3.2   # Ollama

Notes:

Files matching exclude (by default Cargo.lock, package-lock.json, and similar) still appear in the list of changed files sent to the model, but their diffs don't.
Diffs longer than max_diff_chars are cut off. Lower it if your model has a small context window.
git-agent removes reasoning blocks (<think>…</think>) and code fences around the model's reply.
Set NO_COLOR to turn off colored output.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Open an issue for bugs and feature ideas, or send a pull request. For larger changes, please open an issue first so we can discuss the approach.

Before you send a pull request, make sure these pass:

cargo fmt --check
cargo clippy --all-targets
cargo test

The tests create temporary git repositories and don't need a running model server.

License

git-agent is licensed under the MIT License. By contributing, you agree that your contributions are licensed under the same terms.

git-agent 0.2.0