I recently reviewed student submissions where every project had a single commit: “Finish assignment.”

The work itself was good. But this is a habit worth changing early.

What single commits look like

0fe5909 Finish markdown assignment

What incremental commits look like

a1b2c3d Add name and studying sections
d4e5f6g Complete programming experience list
g7h8i9j Add goals and fun fact
j0k1l2m Fill out AI collaboration summary
m3n4o5p Final review and cleanup

Why this matters

Safety net. If you break something, you can go back to a working version.

Learning record. You can see how your thinking evolved.

Professional practice. In team environments, clear commit history helps others understand your work.

Debugging. When something stops working, you can find exactly when it broke.

A good rule of thumb: if you’d be upset to lose what you just wrote, commit it.

Commit message conventions

Notice the messages say “Add” not “Added.” Git convention uses the imperative mood—write commits as commands.

Think of it as completing the sentence: “If applied, this commit will… add name and studying sections.”

This style fits perfectly with Pull Requests. When you open a PR, GitHub shows your commit messages as a list of things that will happen when merged.

One-line vs multi-line

Short commits need just one line. For bigger changes, use a subject line, a blank line, then a body:

Add email field to user data schema


Update data.json to include optional email property.
Modify display component to show email when present.

The first line shows in git log summaries; the body provides context.

AI can help with Git

Those sparkles in VS Code sometimes generate terrible commit messages. Don’t just accept them.

Instead, ask your AI assistant to suggest a message, then refine it together. You can even ask it to handle the commit and push once you’re happy.

Git has about 160 commands. I know maybe 15. AI knows them all. Use that.

Why this matters for your career

Don’t be surprised if a future employer browses your GitHub repos—including your commit messages—to see how you work.

Clean, consistent commits signal professionalism.

The habit you build now is the habit you’ll have on day one of your first job. Make it a good one.