How I Fixed My AI Git Commit Messages for Staged Changes in Cursor IDE

Like many developers, I’m always looking for ways to speed up my workflow. Using AI to write git commit messages seemed like a perfect time-saver. But I kept running into a frustrating problem: the AI summaries included every change in my project, even the unstaged ones.

This meant my commit messages were often wrong. They didn’t match what I was actually committing. After some experimenting, I found a fix that finally got AI commit messages working right for staged changes only.

The Problem: Unstaged Changes Messing Up AI Summaries

Here’s what kept going wrong: every time I used an AI tool for commit messages, it would pull in every change in my project. That included unstaged files I wasn’t ready to commit yet.

Imagine you’re in the middle of a code review. You’ve got some changes staged, but others are still a work in progress. The AI would include them all, making the commit message useless or even misleading. I really wanted something like GitHub Copilot’s staged change handling, but I needed a solution that would stick to the git stage.

My Solution: Using @git in Cursor IDE with a Custom Prompt

I found the fix in Cursor IDE’s @git context provider. It lets you create commit messages right in the chat or edit panels. But the real trick? Adjusting it to focus only on the changes I cared about.

Here’s how I did it:

• First, I opened Cursor and went to the chat or edit feature to talk to the AI
• Next, I used @git to reference my changes. But here’s the important part: I made sure to stage exactly the files I wanted to commit first. That way, the AI only saw what I was committing
• Finally, I used a custom prompt to get the right kind of commit message. This prompt gave me clean, ready-to-use messages every time

Here’s the exact prompt I use. Feel free to copy and tweak it for your own needs:

“Take a deep breath and work on this problem step-by-step. Summarize the provided diff into a clear and concise written commit message. Use the imperative style for the subject, use the imperative style for the body, and limit the subject types to 50 characters or less. Optionally, use a scope, and limit the scope types to 50 characters or less. Be as descriptive as possible, but keep it to a single line. Return a single code block. Ready to be pasted into commit edits without further editing.”

This prompt does a few important things: it asks for a step-by-step approach, requires the imperative style, and sets clear length limits. The best part? It returns a single code block that’s ready to paste — no extra formatting needed.

What I Hope Cursor Adds Next

This workaround gets the job done, but it’s not automatic. I’d love to see Cursor build this feature right into the editor.

Imagine: when you go to commit and the message box is empty, it could prefill with an AI-generated message based on your staged changes. It should only update when you stage new changes, and never replace a message you’ve already written. And if we could save custom prompts? That would be perfect for different projects or teams.

Using this prompt has made my commit process faster and more accurate. If you’re dealing with the same unstaged-change headaches, try it out. It’s a straightforward fix that works well until we get better built-in tools.