@snelusha/noto

noto is designed to work great out of the box, but it's also highly configurable. Here's how to tailor noto to your workflow.

Configuration File

noto stores its configuration at ~/.config/noto/.notorc following XDG standards. You don't need to edit this file manually; use noto's built-in commands instead.

API Key Management

Set or update your Gemini API key:

noto config key "your-gemini-api-key-here"

Model Selection

noto uses gemini-2.0-flash by default. To change the model:

noto config model

This command will prompt you to select from available models.

Tip: The default model works well for most use cases, offering a good balance of speed and quality.

Reset Configuration

Reset all noto configurations to defaults:

noto config reset

This will clear your API key, model selection, and all other settings.

Commit Prompts

While noto generates conventional commits by default, every project has its own style. That's where commit prompts come in.

What is `noto init`?

The noto init command analyzes your existing commit history and generates a custom prompt that matches your project's style:

noto init

Note: Requires at least 5 commits in your repository history.

noto will:

Analyze your repository's commit history
Identify patterns in your commit messages
Generate a commit prompt file at .noto/commit-prompt.md
Use this prompt for all future commit messages in this project

When you run noto, it looks for a .noto/commit-prompt.md file in your current directory (or any parent directory). If found, noto uses your custom prompt instead of conventional commits. If not found, noto falls back to generating conventional commits.

Multiple Commit Prompts

Working on a monorepo with multiple projects? No problem. noto supports multiple commit prompt files based on your current working directory.

Example structure:

monorepo/
├── .noto/commit-prompt.md          # Root-level prompt
├── packages/
│   ├── frontend/
│   │   └── .noto/commit-prompt.md  # Frontend-specific prompt
│   └── backend/
│       └── .noto/commit-prompt.md  # Backend-specific prompt

When you run noto from packages/frontend/, it uses the frontend-specific prompt. From packages/backend/, it uses the backend prompt. noto picks the closest .noto/commit-prompt.md file relative to your current directory.

Tip: Commit your .noto/commit-prompt.md files to version control so your entire team uses consistent commit messages.

Environment Variables

Set your API key globally (overrides local configuration):

export NOTO_API_KEY="your-gemini-api-key-here"

Configuration