Free AI commit message generator (no API key, no signup)

Most AI commit message generators ask you for something before they write a single line: a paid OpenAI API key, a signup, a subscription, or all three. If you just want your git history to stop looking like fix stuff and ui thing, that is a lot of friction for a tiny quality-of-life win.

diny is a free AI commit message generator that runs as a command-line tool. No API key. No signup. No credit card. You install it, stage your changes, and run one command.

Why "no API key" actually matters

Tools that route through your own OpenAI or Anthropic key look free on the landing page, but the bill lands on you every time you commit. Keys also leak — into shell history, into CI logs, into committed .env files — and rotating them is its own small chore.

diny calls a hosted backend that owns the model key. You never touch one. The tradeoff is a network round-trip to generate a message, which is already how every other AI commit tool works; the difference is that the cost sits with the project, not with you.

How it works

diny is a small Go CLI. When you run diny commit, it:

1. Reads your staged diff via git diff --cached.
2. Filters out noise — lockfiles, binaries, build artifacts, generated code — so the model sees the changes that actually matter.
3. Sends the cleaned diff and your config (conventional commits, emoji, tone, length) to the diny backend.
4. Streams the generated message back into an interactive TUI where you can accept it, edit it inline, open it in $EDITOR, regenerate with feedback, or pick between multiple variants.

Nothing about your diff is stored. The only thing the backend persists is a telemetry row per request (email from your git config, repo name, diny version) so the public usage stats on the homepage stay honest.

Getting started

The fastest path on macOS or Linux:

brew install dinoDanic/tap/diny
git add .
diny commit

On Windows with Scoop:

scoop bucket add dinodanic https://github.com/dinoDanic/scoop-bucket
scoop install diny
git add .
diny commit

If you prefer not to add a tap or a bucket, pre-built binaries for every platform live on the GitHub releases page.

Everyday usage

The command most people run every day is diny commit. A few shortcuts that remove even more friction once you get used to it:

• diny auto installs a git auto alias so you can commit with git auto instead of leaving your usual git flow.
• diny yolo stages everything, generates a message, commits, and pushes — for the kind of solo-repo work where review is not the point.
• diny link lazygit wires diny into LazyGit so you can generate a message from the LazyGit commit UI.
• diny timeline summarizes your recent commit history for stand-ups or end-of-day wrap-ups.

Everything is configurable via diny config — conventional commit format, emoji, tone, length, custom instructions — with a three-tier system (global, versioned project, local project override).

FAQ

Is it actually free, or is this a free trial?

Actually free. No trial, no usage cap tied to a subscription, no "free forever until we change our minds." The backend is a regular open-source Next.js app; the project eats the model cost. If that ever stops being sustainable, the CLI will still work with a self-hosted backend because the source is public.

Is diny open source?

Yes. MIT licensed, Go source on GitHub, backend in the same organization. Read it, fork it, self-host it.

Does it need the internet?

Yes — the model runs on a hosted backend, so you need a working network connection to generate a message. If you are offline, git commit still exists and is still great.

How does it compare to aicommits and opencommit?

Both are solid tools with longer track records than diny, and both route through your own API key. For a full side-by-side — including where they win over diny — read diny vs aicommits vs opencommit.

Will it respect my conventional commit style?

Yes. Turn on commit.conventional in diny config and the generator will format messages like feat(auth): add refresh-token rotation. You can scope the allowed types, toggle emoji prefixes, and layer per-project overrides.

More on why this exists at all: the diny homepage has the live usage numbers, the install options, and the Hall of Fame of the loudest diny users.