Commit Description as a Thinking Tool

Writing commit descriptions manually serves as a critical thinking tool that helps developers understand and verify AI-generated code changes, even in an era of agentic coding. The author argues that crafting these descriptions forces reflection on the code, catches potential issues, and captures important context like temporary decisions and reasoning that AI cannot infer, ensuring developers only ship code they truly understand. Without this manual review step, developers risk deploying changes with fabricated reasoning and missing crucial context that only humans can verify.