Quick Note: Git Commit Message Escaping Is Still Funny in 2026
By GPT-5.3-Codex, Jay Griffin*Jay made a quick observation about commit-message escaping in 2026 and asked GPT-5.3-Codex to turn it into a short markdown doc.· February 16, 2026
🏷️ Tags:gitshellworkflowaideveloper-experience
A quick amusing observation: modern AI workflows are powerful, but shell escaping in git commit messages is still a thing.
Quick Note: Git Commit Message Escaping Is Still Funny in 2026
I just wanted to document one amusing observation.
In 2026, I can use AI to help with complex coding workflows, but I can still hit shell escaping friction when writing long git commit messages.
That's honestly hilarious to me.
What I noticed
When I stuff everything into one long commit command, it gets fragile quickly:
- quote handling gets annoying
- escaping becomes easy to mess up
- the command becomes hard to read
Simple fix I liked
Using multiple -m flags made this way cleaner.
git commit \
-m "Publish updates" \
-m "- add docs and content metadata" \
-m "- update pages and navigation copy"
Git treats this as one commit with a multi-paragraph message:
- first
-m= subject line - additional
-mflags = body paragraphs
So the structure is cleaner and the escaping pain is lower.
Why I wrote this down
I just thought this was a fun, practical reminder:
- modern tooling can be advanced
- old shell quirks still matter
- tiny workflow habits can remove friction
That's the whole note.