🚀 Introducing the New Commit Composer View

[justinrobots]

Available in GitLens 17.4

Building on the feedback from our initial Commit Composer preview, we're excited to share the next evolution of this feature: the new Commit Composer view that puts you in control of the composition process.

🔄 From Automatic to Interactive

The original Commit Composer preview worked as a streamlined one-step process: send your changes to AI, get back well-formed commits with clear messages, done. While this saved tons of time on commit message writing, it wasn't flexible enough to take custom instructions or allow composed commits to be previewed and modified before committing.

The new Commit Composer view transforms this into a comprehensive drafting and review experience for working changes where you can:

• Preview before committing: See exactly what will be committed before it touches your repository
• Switch Models: Try composition with different AI models
• Guide the AI: Provide custom instructions to match your team's conventions and preferences
• Iterate and refine: Regenerate individual messages or entire commit compositions
• Review and edit: Manually tweak any commit message or approach

✨ What You Can Do in the New View

Before AI Composition

• Preview your changes that will be sent to AI for analysis
• Select your preferred AI model from available providers
• Add custom instructions to guide AI output (e.g., "Follow conventional commits format" or "Keep messages under 50 characters")

After AI Composition

• Review draft commits in an organized list showing what will actually be committed
• Edit commit messages directly in the interface
• Regenerate individual messages using AI with
• Re-compose the entire set if you want to try a different approach with different instructions
• Review code changes for each proposed commit through integrated diffs

Manual Control

• Create commits manually by writing your own messages (or having AI generate them)
• Commit directly from within the Composer view
• Undo or reset at any point in the process

🎯 How to Access the Commit Composer View

You can launch the new Commit Composer view from several places in GitLens:

• GitLens commit details view
• Context menu on the WIP row in the GitLens Commit Graph
• Active branch card in the GitLens Home View
• ✨ icon in the SCM view header
• Command palette: Search for "Compose Commits"

Note: You don't need AI features connected to access the view—you can use it for manual commit composition too. AI features (auto-composition and message generation) will require a connected AI provider.

🔮 What's Coming Next

This new foundation enables exciting features we're planning for future releases:

• Drag-and-drop functionality for moving lines and hunks between draft commits
• Create new draft commits on the fly during the composition process
• Reorder commit sequences
• Recompose existing branches and commits with the same controls

🤝 We Want Your Feedback

This represents a significant evolution of Commit Composer based on your input from the preview. As we continue to refine this feature, we'd love to hear:

• How does the draft-first workflow feel compared to the immediate commit approach?
• What custom instructions are most useful for your team's workflow?
• Are there any gaps in the current composition controls?
• How intuitive is the new interface for your daily Git workflow?
• What future features would be most valuable to you?

🚨 A Note on This Release

This is still marked as PREVIEW as we continue to iterate based on community feedback. The core functionality is solid, but we're actively improving the experience based on how you use it in practice.

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Ready to try the new Commit Composer view? Access it through any of the entry points mentioned above and let us know how it works for your workflow. Your feedback directly shapes how we continue to evolve this feature!

Drop your thoughts, questions, or suggestions in the comments below! 👇

[justinrobots]

This is live in the production release of GitLens 17.4. The GitLens team is looking forward to your feedback!

[brokenpotatoes]

I have an issue with the commit composer where it only sees the changed files but does not see added new files or removed ones. I just started a new repo and it makes the commit composer very useless for me since most of my code is in new files

[justinrobots]

Hi @brokenpotatoes , thanks for the feedback. We have some fixes coming in the next release that should resolve your issues with untracked files on new repos. Keep an eye out for those and let us know if they help.

[tarikmanoar]

Recently I have used Commit Composer View on my project but the signature is unverified.

[AntonPieper]

I also face the same problem, I have to manually rebase and sign the commits to have signatures again. I hope the Gitkraken team fixes this sooner than later!

[CsatiZoltan]

Is there a way to bring back the old interface? I have gitlens.ai.experimental.composer.enabled deselected in the settings, but I still see this button.

[justinrobots]

Hi @CsatiZoltan can you provide more information about the interface you are trying to bring back? Which button are you referring to?

[PeanutSplash]

It would be great if the custom prompt I enter here could be saved permanently, so I don’t have to retype it every time.

[lukaszwojcik89]

Totally agree! Maybe there's a settings option to save a default prompt or a simple instruction?

[redfellow]

This is the main thing I want asap. Even when pinning the tab so it won't close by itself after commits, any splitting of the editor windows resets the instructions and model selection.

[justinrobots]

This is a great idea! I've created an issue for the team to explore this.

#4685

[justinrobots]

@lukaszwojcik89 @redfellow there is a GitLens setting called Generate Commits: Custom Instructions (vscode://settings/gitlens.ai.generateCommits.customInstructions) where you can include custom instructions to be added whenever Commit Composer auto-composes commits.

We'll continue to work on improving the UX for discovering and applying this from Commit Composer, but for now this should do what you're asking.

[str]

We use git-flow where every feature branch is feature/ticket-number-small-description.

We use the internal standard to have as the commit header "ticket-number Small Description", like "GH-4530 Commit Composer View". Is there a way to define that rule for the suggestion to be used,? Somewhere (like in .github/copilot-instructions.md)

Thank you.

[justinrobots]

Hi @str , thanks for reaching out. There is a GitLens setting (vscode://settings/gitlens.ai.generateCommitMessage.customInstructions) that allows you to set custom instructions when generating commit messages in GitLens. You will also need to add the same instructions in the setting for generating commits with Commit Composer (vscode://settings/gitlens.ai.generateCommits.customInstructions) since Commit Composer doesn't reference the first setting yet.

This will help with formatting commit messages, but you'd still need a way to get the ticket number in there. We are exploring different ways to work on issues via AI in GitLens that could help with this, so stay tuned for more on that in upcoming releases.

[str]

This is the prompt I used:

Start the commit message with the "TICKET-number - title" as first line. Use the branch name to get that info. The commit message should be a detailed bullet list of changes.

It was not able to get the ticket-number from the "feature/GH-4530" branch. Any suggestions?

[str]

@justinrobots just an idea. An option in the dropdown menu to point to the specific config setting would help

[kingtistel]

The tool takes all modified files under both "Staged Changes" and "Changes" -- instead of just "Staged Changes".
Also the AI will nicely create some draft commits, but will not allow to commit just some of them.

[justinrobots]

Hi @kingtistel, thanks for the feedback. We're working on expanding Commit Composer to allow for more manual composition, like only committing some draft commits of even separating work into separate branches, so it's good to hear we're on the right track here. I'll take this feedback to the team.

[kingtistel]

The tool annoyingly shows this after a repository fetch even if nothing changed.

[justinrobots]

Hi @kingtistel I've reported this here. If you can provide any more information about your environment, configuration, etc. that will help us troubleshoot. Thanks for the feedback!