What it does

CodeGPT is a Go CLI that generates git commit messages from your staged diff using an LLM. It can also spit out a brief code review summary. Run it manually or install a prepare-commit-msg hook so every commit gets an AI-written first draft automatically.

The interesting bit

The project is less about novelty and more about plumbing: it supports seven different AI backends (OpenAI, Azure, Gemini, Anthropic, Groq, Ollama, OpenRouter) and lets you customize prompt templates, diff context lines, and output language. The api_key_helper option is a nice touch for secret-manager users — it runs a shell command to fetch credentials dynamically instead of leaving keys on disk.

Key highlights

• Formats commits to the conventional commits spec by default
• Hooks into git via prepare-commit-msg with codegpt hook install / uninstall
• Supports SOCKS/HTTP proxies, streaming output, and per-repo file exclusion from diffs
• Config lives in ~/.config/codegpt/.codegpt.yaml; override via env vars or CLI flags
• Available via Homebrew, Chocolatey, install script, go install, or VSCode devcontainer feature

Caveats

• The README mentions gpt-5 in one place, which does not exist; the default model is gpt-4o
• Token costs can add up if you commit frequently with large diffs and don’t cap max_tokens

Verdict

Worth a look if you write a lot of commits and hate blank-message paralysis. Skip it if you already have strong commit discipline or don’t want API keys near your git workflow.