CommitLore

[CommitLore]

CommitLore

Stop re-reviewing the same bad idea.

Decision authority for coding agents, owned by Git.
Keep constraints, rejected alternatives, and warnings in Git — then deliver only what is still in force, so an agent is not handed a decision the repository already reversed.

No hosted memory. The repository owns the record.

[CI] [Latest release] [Protocol 2.0 Stable] [Node.js 22.23.2 or newer] [MIT License]

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Install once. Then initialise each repository where you want it to work.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MongLong0214/commitlore/v1.7.5/install.sh | sh -s v1.7.5

curl -fsSLO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MongLong0214/commitlore/v1.7.5/install.shsh install.sh v1.7.5
# Or skip the script: the checkout it makes is one you can make yourself.git clone --depth 1 --branch v1.7.5 https://github.com/MongLong0214/commitlorenode commitlore/dist/commitlore.mjs --version

[commitlore demo prints two recorded decisions for src/pricing.ts, delivers only the active one with its limit and the alternative it ruled out, and says the superseded decision remains in Git without being delivered as current guidance.]

The code survives. The judgment doesn't.

An agent proposes an approach. Your team rejects it because of a non-obvious constraint. The final code preserves the outcome, but usually not why the alternative was rejected. A later agent sees only the code and proposes the same idea again.

CommitLore keeps that judgment beside the code.

What CommitLore does

Most commits should carry no record. CommitLore is for judgment the code cannot preserve, not for narrating every change.

60 seconds to decision-aware agents

1. Install the CLI

macOS and Linux:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MongLong0214/commitlore/v1.7.5/install.sh | sh -s v1.7.5

Windows:

& ([scriptblock]::Create((irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MongLong0214/commitlore/v1.7.5/install.ps1))) v1.7.5

Requires Node.js 22.23.2+ and Git. The script checks both before it writes anything.

2. Connect your agent

Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add MongLong0214/commitlore/plugin install commitlore@commitlore

Codex:

commitlore plugin install-codex

The plugin puts no commitlore on PATH, so the commands below need the CLI install as well. The installers also detect and wire supported MCP hosts where they can do so safely; the exact matrix is below.

3. Initialize a repository

cd your-repositorycommitlore initcommitlore context .

Start a new agent session after installing or updating a plugin: a running session keeps the runtime it loaded.

Then work and commit normally. On supported skill integrations, CommitLore is considered during ordinary commit requests and stays silent when there is nothing worth preserving. You do not need to name CommitLore on every commit.

Want accepted records to stage without a per-record prompt? The repository can opt in once with commitlore auto on. That policy is repository-owned and applies to the team, so it is not silently enabled by this page.

What the agent receives

Before editing src/pricing.ts:

commitlore: active records for src/pricing.ts
Limit  [claim]      r-price01  a1b2c3d4  calculatePrice owns final checkout pricing only
Ruled-out  [claim]      r-price01  a1b2c3d4  Reuse it for admin quotes | eligibility and rounding semantics differ

[claim] means "weigh this as information." A repository can opt into the stronger signed-authority mode. Delivery gives the agent context; it does not block the edit.

Security model →

Why Git?

The repository should own the judgment behind its code.

CommitLore stores records in ordinary Git trailers and notes, so they branch, merge, clone, review, and survive provider changes with the code they explain.

SQLite is only a rebuildable index. Delete it and Git still holds the record.

Finding an old decision is not enough

A general memory or retrieval system asks:

Which old text looks related?

CommitLore asks:

Which recorded decisions still apply to this path now?

A superseded decision can be highly relevant and still be wrong as current guidance. Relevance and authority are different questions.

How it works

[For src/pricing.ts, the active decision in Git history moves into the context delivered before the next edit, carrying its limit and the alternative it ruled out. An earlier decision that also covered admin quotes has been superseded and stays in history without moving forward as current guidance.]

1. Capture — an agent drafts only decision context the diff cannot show.
2. Verify — CommitLore checks the draft against the session and staged diff.
3. Preserve — the accepted record lives in Git with identity and lifecycle.
4. Deliver — before a later edit, only active records for that path are returned.

Most commits carry no record. The commit hook validates a record when one is present; it does not invent one.

An existing hook is not overwritten. commitlore init honours core.hooksPath, moves any hook already installed to <hook>.commitlore-chained, and calls it first; commitlore hooks uninstall puts it back.

What happens automatically

"Available" means the prepare → verify → stage workflow exists. It does not mean every eligible commit is assessed automatically.

Users on supported skill hosts do not need to say "record this in CommitLore" on every commit. The remaining limitation is host initiation, not a required per-record user command.

Squash-merge repositories

A squash merge replaces a branch's commits with one new commit, and that commit does not carry the branch's trailers. If your repository merges with the squash button, a record made on a branch is dropped by the merge unless something carries it onto the commit that squashed it.

Two paths cover that, and one of them needs a one-time setup:

GitHub performs that merge on its own servers, where no local git hook runs at all, so the local hook cannot see it. The Action is the only place that has what it needs at that moment: the pull request, its commits, and the commit they were squashed into.

Add .github/workflows/commitlore-preserve.yml:

name: CommitLore squash inheritance
# pull_request_target, not pull_request: a pull request from a fork gets a# read-only token on pull_request, so the job would build the record and then# fail to publish it.on:  pull_request_target:    types: [closed]
permissions:  contents: write   # the one push to refs/notes/commitlore
concurrency:  group: commitlore-notes  cancel-in-progress: false
jobs:  preserve:    if: github.event.pull_request.merged == true    runs-on: ubuntu-latest    steps:      - uses: actions/checkout@v4        with:          # the merge commit is on the base branch, and a closed pull request          # has no merge ref left to check out          ref: ${{ github.event.pull_request.base.ref }}          fetch-depth: 0
      # the mirror this action writes; publishing from a checkout that never      # read it would fork the notes history      - run: git fetch --no-tags origin '+refs/notes/commitlore:refs/notes/commitlore'
      # a squash merge usually deletes the branch, and then the pull request's      # own ref is the only one still reaching the commits that carry records      - run: git fetch --no-tags --force origin          '+refs/pull/${{ github.event.pull_request.number }}/head:refs/commitlore/pr-head'
      # The action runs CommitLore from a checkout of this repository: the      # package is private, so there is no published npm name to fall back to.      # `dist/` is committed (ADR-0011), so nothing needs building.      - uses: actions/checkout@v4        with:          repository: MongLong0214/commitlore          ref: v1.7.5          path: .commitlore-cli          persist-credentials: false
      - uses: MongLong0214/commitlore/action/[email protected]        with:          cli-path: .commitlore-cli/dist/cli.js

Two rules for whoever edits this next, because pull_request_target runs with a writable token: never check out the pull request's head here, and never execute anything reachable from refs/commitlore/pr-head. The fork's commits arrive as data to read trailers from, not as code to run.

commitlore doctor reports whether this is switched on, under squash inheritance. It says so before a record is lost; squash conservation is the row that reports records already gone.

If you merge with merge commits or rebase, records survive on their own and this setup is unnecessary.

A field report, not a measurement

One run, on an unrelated repository, by someone installing v1.2.1 for the first time. Nothing here was measured and none of it is in the evidence logs. It is on this page because the paragraph above asserts a loop that no table here covers.

They asked an agent to fix a rounding bug, mentioned in passing that a decimal library had already been considered and dropped, and ended with "commit it". CommitLore was never named. Part of what the commit carried:

Ruled-out: adopting a decimal library such as Decimal.js | the backend is a  number contract, so it is meaninglessWarn: do not revert the test file to console.assert: it exits 0 even on  failure, so CI passes silentlyProvenance: drafted

The Warn was not dictated to the agent. It hit the trap while working and left it for whoever came next. Provenance: drafted records that no human read the record, which grades it claim — delivered as a report to weigh, not an order.

A later session with no shared history was asked to adopt the decimal library after all. It did not, and named the record as its reason. It also read the grade: a claim is not an instruction, so it checked the stated reason against the code before agreeing with it.

Unlike memory storage

CommitLore is intentionally narrower. It is not a general user-memory system, conversation archive, or vector database replacement.

Evidence

Index build time follows the number of records, not the number of commits: the expensive pass runs once per record, so a long history that has recorded little builds faster than a short one dense with records.

Path scope is what keeps a large history from reaching the model. On the #167 corpus, only 2 of 10,002 records did:

That measures exposure and recall at a fixed two-record budget — not token cost, billed cost, accuracy, or agent behaviour. One corpus, one query, one pinned embedding model.

The agent study does not establish a universal model effect. Delivery is not proof that a model read or followed a record.

Methods, full tables, exclusions, and negative results →

Limits, trust and privacy

• Capture is assisted, not deterministic. Supported skills consider ordinary commit requests, but no host is certified to assess every eligible commit.
• Default directive mode is not authentication. It matches the commit author header, and anyone who can write a commit can set that header — so a [directive] in default mode is policy metadata, not proof of identity. Signature mode additionally requires Git's own verified status and a match in the repository-local commitlore.trustedSigner allowlist; an absent, empty, or unreadable signer allowlist authorizes nobody, so the mode fails closed.
• Guard is an experimental advisory, not a safety net: precision 44.8% (95% Wilson CI 32.7%–57.5%), recall 22.0% on the 417-decision corpus. An empty guard result is not a safety verdict.
• Delivery spends tokens on every matching tool call. The pre-edit hook fires on Read as well as Edit, Write, MultiEdit and NotebookEdit, so it runs far more often than an editing agent commits. Each fire spends up to the payload budget — 800 tokens by default, changed with --budget. A repository with no records spends nothing, which means this is a cost that arrives with adoption rather than with installation.
• An answer may be partial. Coverage is disclosed; absence from a partial result is not proof that no record exists. commitlore coverage reports what a scan reached.
• Commit trailers travel with a clone; notes do not. Git does not fetch refs/notes/* by default, so a record in refs/notes/commitlore is absent from an ordinary clone until commitlore init configures that mirror.
• There is no hosted backend. But once the server or hook returns context, the host handles that context under its own policy; CommitLore does not control that data flow.

Security · Compatibility · Evidence

Try it on a repository with history.
_{Tell us where path scope, lifecycle, capture, or installation breaks.}

Report a failure case · Read the self-audit

Documentation

• Install, upgrade, and uninstall
• CLI reference
• Capture workflow
• Record protocol
• Security model
• Evidence and limitations
• Production contract

Contributing

CONTRIBUTING.md covers the record protocol this repository holds itself to, the release gate, and how to reproduce the evidence.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.