Conventional commit checker

A colleague added commitlint to a Rust project. Suddenly the repo needed Node.js, npm, Husky, and a node_modules directory just to validate a commit message. The spec is a grammar — parsing it takes milliseconds and has no business pulling in a JavaScript runtime. A single binary is all it needs.

Features

Validation — checks the full commit against Conventional Commits v1.0.0: header format, body structure, footers, and breaking change detection
Semantic parser — parses body and footers, not just a header regex; BREAKING CHANGE is only recognized in the footer section as the spec requires, making it more compliant than most commitlint configurations
Auto-fix — --fix rewrites common header mistakes (wrong case, trailing period, spacing) and prints the corrected message
Body cleaning — strip AI assistant and CI bot trailers (Co-authored-by:, Signed-off-by:, custom regexes) before validation; each removed line is reported so nothing disappears silently
Integrated hook management — commit-check install-hook writes .git/hooks/commit-msg directly; no Husky, no pre-commit framework required
Configurable rules — allowed types, required/allowed scopes, min/max description length, case enforcement, issue tracker footer pattern; set via CLI flags or .commit-check.toml
JSON output — --format json for machine-readable results in CI pipelines
Library crate — use validate_commit, fix_commit_message, and clean_commit_body directly from Rust code
Lightweight — single static binary; pure Rust, no runtime dependencies

Integrations

Local git hook — one command, no extra tooling:

commit-check install-hook

GitHub Actions:

- name: Validate commit message
  run: git log -1 --pretty=%B | docker run -i slundi/commit-check:latest validate

GitLab CI:

commit-msg-check:
  image: slundi/commit-check:latest
  script: echo "$CI_COMMIT_MESSAGE" | commit-check validate
  only: [merge_requests]

Woodpecker / Drone CI:

- name: validate-commit
  image: slundi/commit-check:latest
  commands:
    - echo "$${CI_COMMIT_MESSAGE}" | commit-check validate --verbose

pre-commit framework (.pre-commit-config.yaml):

repos:
  - repo: https://codeberg.org/slundi/conventional-commits
    rev: v1.0.0
    hooks:
      - id: commit-check
        stages: [commit-msg]

Nix — run without installing:

nix run github:slundi/conventional-commits -- validate --message "feat: nix support"

Comparison

	commit-check	commitlint	commitizen
Runtime required	none	❌ Node.js	❌ Node.js / Python
Single static binary	✅	❌	❌
Hook management built-in	✅ `install-hook`	❌ needs Husky	❌ needs Husky
Semantic footer parsing	✅	Partial (regex)	❌
Auto-fix	✅ `--fix`	❌	❌
Body / trailer cleaning	✅	❌	❌
JSON output	✅	✅	❌
Usable as a library	✅ Rust crate	❌	❌
Docker image	✅	✅	❌
Interactive commit wizard	❌	❌	✅

commitizen’s interactive prompt for guided commit creation is out of scope for this tool — it focuses on validation, not authoring.

Installation

cargo install conventional-commits

Docker:

echo "feat: add login" | docker run -i slundi/commit-check:latest validate

Nix flake — no install needed:

nix run github:slundi/conventional-commits -- validate --message "feat: nix support"

Repo · crates.io · lib.rs