CoAttribution 0.1.1.1

CoAttribution

CoAttribution is a command-line tool that tags your Git commits with Co-authored-by and Assisted-by trailers, pulling author identities from a local TOML registry.

Key Features

• Author registry: Map short aliases to names and emails in a TOML file.
• TUI: Pick authors interactively from a terminal UI.
• Commit wrapping: Adds the trailers, then runs git commit for you.
• Dry-run: Print the resulting message without committing.
• NativeAOT: Compiled ahead-of-time for near-instant startup.

Why use it

• Less typing: No more hand-writing co-author blocks on every commit.
• Agent-friendly: Let AI coding agents attribute themselves without ceremony.
• Consistent: One format, applied the same way every time.

Installation

Via NuGet (as a .NET tool)

Install CoAttribution globally as a dotnet tool:

dotnet tool install --global CoAttribution

To update to the latest version:

dotnet tool update --global CoAttribution

See the package page for current versions: nuget.org/packages/CoAttribution.

Via GitHub Releases

Download the latest prebuilt binary for your platform from the GitHub Releases page, then extract it and place the co-attr executable on your PATH.

Usage

Initialise configuration

co-attr init

Creates a global config file and an authors.toml registry pre-populated with common AI agents.

Add a co-author

co-attr author add my-agent --type agent --name "Agent Name" --email "agent@example.com"

List registered authors

co-attr author list

Commit with co-author attribution

git add .
co-attr commit -m "Implement new feature" --coauthor copilot

This appends a Co-authored-by: copilot <copilot@github.com> trailer to the commit message and runs git commit.

Commit with assisted-by attribution

git add .
co-attr commit -m "Fix bug" --assist kilo

Commit with multiple authors

co-attr commit -m "Refactor module" --coauthor copilot --assist kilo

Dry-run (preview without committing)

co-attr commit -m "Draft change" --coauthor copilot --verbose

Project Scope

CoAttribution is an Attribution Metadata Orchestrator. Its purpose is to manage the 'Who' and 'How' of Git commit trailers.

In Scope

• Maintaining a local TOML-based registry of authors (name and email)
• Providing an interactive TUI/CLI for selecting authors and composing commit messages
• Appending Co-authored-by and Assisted-by trailers to commit messages
• Wrapping the git commit command

Out of Scope

• Staging changes: The tool does not run git add or manage the staging area. Changes must already be staged before invoking the tool.
• Message generation: The tool does not integrate with LLMs or generate commit messages. It only appends trailers to messages provided by the caller.
• Remote services: The tool does not communicate with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or any other remote API. It operates entirely on local configuration and local Git.
• Prompt or agent management: The tool is not designed for prompt engineering or AI agent orchestration.

License

This project is licensed under the MPL 2.0.