---
id: commit-check
version: "2.15.0"
license: MIT
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# commit-check — Check commit message formatting, branch naming, commit author, email, and more.

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 85.9K/mo

## What it is and what it does

Commit Check is a policy engine for Git metadata that validates commit messages, branch names, author identity, signoff trailers, and push safety using a single versioned TOML configuration file. It enforces the same policy across local pre-commit hooks, CI pipelines, GitHub Actions, and AI automation toolchains, eliminating inconsistency between development environments and automated checks.

The package ships with sensible defaults based on Conventional Commits and Conventional Branch conventions, but allows fine-grained customization via cchk.toml configuration files, CLI arguments, or environment variables. It supports organization-level policy inheritance, machine-readable JSON output for AI agents and automation scripts, and a Python API for programmatic use without subprocess overhead. The tool is designed to integrate seamlessly into existing Git workflows while providing enforcement points for commit quality and safety policies.

Use it for:

- Enforce Conventional Commits and branch naming standards across a team without manual review.
- Prevent accidental force pushes and unsafe ref updates in pre-push hooks.
- Validate AI-generated commits for proper attribution and policy compliance in LLM-driven workflows.
- Share organization-level commit policies across multiple repositories using inherit_from configuration.
- Generate structured JSON output for CI/CD pipelines and automation scripts that need to parse validation results programmatically.
- Validate commit author identity and email patterns to ensure only authorized contributors can commit.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

Validates Git commit messages, branch names, author identity, and push safety against a versioned TOML policy, enforced across local hooks, CI, and AI automation.

Yes. Commit Check is actively maintained, has low install friction, carries no security vulnerabilities, and solves a real problem—enforcing consistent commit policy across local and CI environments. It is particularly valuable if your team uses Conventional Commits, needs to share policies across repositories, or integrates AI-driven commit generation. The MIT license and broad Python version support (3.10–3.14) make adoption straightforward.

## Install

pip install commit-check
uv add commit-check
poetry add commit-check

## Installing commit-check

Before you install: Low install friction: pure Python wheel with only pyyaml and tomli as runtime dependencies. Actively maintained with a release 1 day old and 70 repository stars.

License in practice: MIT license permits unrestricted use, modification, and distribution with minimal attribution requirements.

Quickstart:

pip install commit-check
commit-check --message --branch

# Or in .pre-commit-config.yaml:
repos:
  - repo: https://github.com/commit-check/commit-check
    rev: v2.15.0
    hooks:
      - id: check-message
      - id: check-branch

Requires Python 3.10 or later.

Verify before relying:

- Whether the default Conventional Commits and Conventional Branch policies are sufficient for most projects without custom configuration.
- Performance characteristics when validating large numbers of commits in CI/CD pipelines.
- Compatibility and interaction with other pre-commit hooks in complex workflows.

## Package facts

- License: MIT (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 85.9K/month (top 15,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

git commit message validation, conventional commits checker, branch naming policy enforcement, pre-commit hook framework, commit metadata linter, git policy engine, conventional branch validator, git-workflow, policy-enforcement, conventional-commits

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