Commits with clear messages

A commit message is a note to a future reader. That is often you in three months, or a recruiter scrolling through your history. A good message starts with a short summary line of around 50 characters that says what changed.

Write it as an instruction (the imperative): "Add CSV export for expenses" or "Fix crash when marks file is empty". When the reason is not obvious, add a body underneath that explains why. Messages like "update", "final" or "asdf" tell nobody anything and make your GitHub look like a dump of files.

Clear commit messages also make git log useful when you need to find when a bug appeared. If you cannot describe a commit in one line, it probably does too much.