The name "Undercover mode" and the line `The phrase "Claude Code" or any mention that you are an AI` sound spooky, but after reading the source my first knee-jerk reaction wouldn't be "this is for pretending to be human" given that the file is largely about hiding Anthropic internal information such as code names. I encourage looking at the source itself in order to draw your conclusions, it's very short: https://github.com/alex000kim/claude-code/blob/main/src/util...
The feature seems pretty obviously for Anthropic employees who are using unreleased models internally and do not want to leak any details in public commit messages.
That seems desirable? Like that's what commit messages are for. Describing the change. Much rather that than the m$ way of putting ads in commit messages
The commit message should complement the code. Ideally, what the code does should not need a separate description, but of course there can be exceptions. Usually, it's more interesting to capture in the commit message what is not in the code: the reason why this approach was chosen and not some other obvious one. Or describe what is missing, and why it isn't needed.
That sounds like design discussions best had in the issue/ticket itself, before you even start writing code. Then the commit message references the ticket and has a brief summary of the changes.
Writing and reading paragraphs of design discussion in a commit message is not something that seems common.
Ticket systems are quite ephemeral. I still have access to commit messages from the 90s (and I didn't work on the software at the time). I haven't been able to track the contents of the gnats bug tracker from those days.
And of course tickets can be private, so even if the data survived migration, you may not have access to it (principle of least privilege and all that).
if you've changed a function and are worried about the reason for the change not being tracked or disappearing, then add it as a comment, the commit message is not the place for this.
Not really about design, but technical reasons why this solution came to be when it’s not that obvious. It’s not often needed. And when it does, it usually fits in a short paragraph.
What you're describing here is a design. The most important parts of a design are the decisions and their reasoning.
e.g. "we decided on tool/library pattern X over tool/library/pattern Y because Z" – that is a design, usually discussed outside (and before) a commit message.
You discuss these decisions with others, document the discussion and decision, and then you have a design and can start writing code.
Let me ask you this: suppose you have a task that needs to be done eventually, and you want to write down some ideas for it, but don't want to start coding right now. Where do you put those ideas? How do you link them to that specific task?
So you'd disagree with style that Linux uses for their commits?
Random example:
Provide a new syscall which has the only purpose to yield the CPU after the
kernel granted a time slice extension.
sched_yield() is not suitable for that because it unconditionally
schedules, but the end of the time slice extension is not required to
schedule when the task was already preempted. This also allows to have a
strict check for termination to catch user space invoking random syscalls
including sched_yield() from a time slice extension region.
I think my post makes it pretty clear that I would. If you want, I could cite several examples of organizations which use the method I described, so you can weigh it against the one example you provided, and get the full picture.
In your example, for example, where was the issue tracked before the code was written? The format you linked makes it difficult to get the history of the issue.
Let me ask you this: suppose you have a task that needs to be done eventually, and you want to write down some ideas for it, but don't want to start coding right now. Where do you put those ideas? How do you link them to that specific task?
Everyone has its own system although companies do tend to codify it with a project manager. I used TODO.txt inside the repo. an org file, Things.app, a stack of papers, and a whiteboard. But once a task is done, I can summarize the context in a paragraph or two. That’s what I put in the commits.
Git was built for email, because that's the system Linux uses. Commits appear inline. Diffs are reviewed and commented inline.
Email is the review process, and commits contain enough information that git blame can get you a reasoning - it doesn't require you checking the email archive. Rather than a dead ticket that no longer exists.
I can also supply you a list of companies that make use of git's builtin features if you like. But thats probably not relevant to discussing management techniques.
Unfortunately GitHub Copilot’s commit message generation feature is very human. It’s picked up some awful habits from lazy human devs. I almost always get some pointless “… to improve clarity” or “… for enhanced usability” at the end of the message.
VS Code has a setting that promises to change the prompt it uses to generate commit messages, but it mostly ignores my instructions, even very literal ones like “don’t use the words ‘enhance’ or ‘improve’”. And oddly having it set can sometimes result in Cyrillic characters showing up at the end of the message.
Ultimately I stopped using it, because editing the messages cost me more time than it saved.
Honestly the aggressive verbosity of github copilot is half the reason don't use its suggested comments. AI generated code comments follow an inverted-wadsworth-constant: Only the first 30% is useful.
As opposed to outputting debugging information, which I wouldnt be surprised if LLMs do output "debug" output blurbs which could include model specific information.
The human developer would just write what the code does, because the commit also contains an email address that identifies who wrote the commit. There's no reason to write:
> Commit f9205ab3 by dkenyser on 2026-3-31 at 16:05:
> Fixed the foobar bug by adding a baz flag - dkenyser
Because it already identified you in the commit description. The reason to add a signature to the message is that someone (or something) that isn't you is using your account, which seems like a bad idea.
Aside from merges that combine commits from many authors onto a production branch or release tag. I would personally not leave an agent to do that sort of work.
Which is funny given how many workplaces are requiring developers use AI, measuring their usage, and stack ranking them by how many tokens they burn. What I want is something that I can run my human-created work product through to fool my employer and its AI bean counters into thinking I used AI to make it.
I guess that would work until they started auditing your prompts. I suppose you could just have a background process on your workstation just sitting there Clauding away on the actual problem, while you do your development work, and then just throw away the LLM's output.
Undercover mode seems like a way to make contributions to OSS when they detect issues, without accidentally leaking that it was claude-mythos-gigabrain-100000B that figured out the issue
