Clean Up AI Agent Commits with rebase -i and Autosquash

Agents tend to leave a trail of partial attempts and follow-up fixes. Cleaning that history before review lets every remaining commit explain one intentional change instead of the conversation that produced it.

When to use

Fold small review fixes into the commit that introduced the change.
Turn an experimental local branch into a readable PR before pushing it.
Preserve several meaningful commits while removing noisy intermediate ones.

Example

An agent creates an auth feature, then three commits named fix test, fix lint and handle null. Attach those corrections to the original auth commit before opening the PR.

TL;DR

Mark corrections as fixups, then let Git fold them into the right commit.

bash

git commit --fixup=<sha>
git rebase -i --autosquash main

Steps

1
See what the agent committed
Inspect only commits on the current branch so you can decide whether to keep their boundaries or rebuild them as one change.
bash
```
git log --oneline main..HEAD
```
2
Option A: squash everything into one commit
Fastest when the history has no value.
bash
```
git reset --soft main
git commit -m "feat(auth): add password reset flow"
```
3
Option B: attach a fix to an earlier commit
Stage the correction and point the fixup at the original commit; replace a1b2c3d with its real commit ID.
bash
```
git add src/auth.ts
git commit --fixup=a1b2c3d
```
4
Fold the fixups in
The editor opens with fixups already placed. Save and close.
bash
```
git rebase -i --autosquash main
```
5
Enable autosquash by default
If you use fixup commits frequently, this setting makes interactive rebase recognize and position them without repeating the flag.
bash
```
git config --global rebase.autoSquash true
```

Gotchas

Rewriting pushed commits requires git push --force-with-lease.
Do not rewrite branches other people already built on.
If a rebase goes wrong: git rebase --abort, or recover with git reflog.
Use --fixup=amend:<sha> to also change the commit message.

Cheat sheet

git reset --soft main	Unstage all commits, keep changes
git commit --fixup=<sha>	Correction for an earlier commit
git rebase -i --autosquash main	Apply fixups automatically
git rebase --abort	Cancel a rebase
git reflog	Find lost commits

Sources

Reviewing agent output? CodeCrab reviews pull requests locally with your own AI tools.

Previous Next