Finished my project for the locked in challenge, I am aware I did go over the 10 hour mark for devlogs though but it was a lot of work and I did not want to do much context switching.
Built CommitForge during a hackathon-style sprint which is a CLI tool that scans your repo, tells you what you’re about to commit, catches obvious mistakes, and suggests a proper commit message, all in one command. I started by setting up a clean project structure and locking in core dataclasses early so everything stayed stable. The initial version had multiple commands and worked fine, with config loading from .commitforge.json and about 29 tests passing, but the output was useless since it just said files changed. I rewrote the analyzer to actually parse git diffs, so it could report meaningful changes like added functions, then added checks for debug prints, TODOs, secrets, and missing tests, plus a clean HTML report that opens automatically.
On the second day, I focused on usability issues. The tool wasn’t scanning untracked files, which is when you need it most, so I fixed that. Commit suggestions were also bad, so I improved them to follow proper Conventional Commits like feat(auth): add password validation. I reduced noise by only analyzing changed or new files and limiting warnings to what actually matters. Finally, based on feedback, I simplified everything into a single drag and click pipeline. I removed unnecessary features like the GUI and overly granular checks, cleaned up the codebase, and ended with 39 passing tests. Tested it on a random project, got clean and useful output, and shipped it.
