Frequently asked questions about Commit Guard.
This page gathers the most common support questions around setup, providers, editions, commit-message generation, terminal hooks, and issue reporting.
General
What is Commit Guard?
Commit Guard is an IntelliJ plugin for workflow-driven AI code review. It can review pending changes, local commits, and selected scopes, then produce findings and a structured report inside the IDE.
Which IDEs and versions are supported?
Commit Guard is currently verified on WebStorm, PyCharm, IntelliJ IDEA Community, PyCharm Community, PhpStorm, RubyMine, IntelliJ IDEA, CLion, DataSpell, and GoLand.
Supported branches are 2025.1.x, 2025.2.x, 2025.3.x, and 2026.1.x. IntelliJ IDEA Community and
PyCharm Community are verified through 2025.2.x only because JetBrains uses unified IntelliJ IDEA and PyCharm product lines from
2025.3.x onward. Release automation verifies the latest supported build for each product line rather than every patch in each branch.
See the Technical Information page for the full product matrix.
What is the difference between Community and Platinum?
Community focuses on local review with Ollama CLI and the core AI review flow. Platinum adds supported cloud providers, advanced workflows, commit-message generation, daemon features, terminal commit workflows, and debug tooling.
Providers and reviews
How do I run my first review?
Open Settings | Tools | Commit Guard | Providers, configure a provider, open the Commit Guard tool window, choose a review scope, and click Review.
Can I use local models only?
Yes. Community is built around local review with Ollama CLI. Platinum can still use local models, but also supports supported cloud providers.
Why does a review not start?
The most common causes are missing provider configuration, no selected review scope, licensing restrictions for the chosen capability, or provider validation failures. Check the provider settings first.
Commit-message generation
Is commit-message generation available in Community?
No. Commit-message generation is a Platinum capability.
Where do I configure the default commit-message template?
Use Settings | Tools | Commit Guard | Commit Rules. The saved default template is used by both the IntelliJ generation flow and the managed terminal hook path.
How does Jira ticket handling work?
Commit Guard looks for a WD-123 style ticket in the current branch name or existing draft message. If it finds one, it reuses it. If not, it leaves the placeholder such as WD-<ticket-number> instead of inventing a value.
Why did the generated message include extra prompt text?
Older builds could leak prompt scaffolding such as branch context into the final message. Current builds normalize the result and strip those sections before applying the commit message.
Terminal workflows
Why did git commit open the normal Git editor instead of a generated message?
That usually means one of the terminal prerequisites was missing: the managed hooks were not installed yet, IntelliJ was not open on the same repo, the local background service was unavailable, or the commit already had content. The managed terminal path only prefills blank messages.
Will Commit Guard overwrite git commit -m messages?
No. Explicit commit messages are preserved. Terminal prefills only target blank commit message buffers.
What settings are required for terminal commit workflows?
In Settings | Tools | Commit Guard | Advanced, enable the repo sidecar and turn on terminal commit enforcement. Commit Guard will then install the managed hooks for that repository and use the local background service to evaluate commits and prefill blank messages when allowed.
Support and issue tracking
Where should I report a bug?
Use the public GitHub issue tracker in the support repository: open the bug report template.
Where should I request a feature?
Use the public GitHub issue tracker in the support repository: open the feature request template.