alt Hacker NewsClaude Session URL appended to commit messages and PR descriptions by default
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I can't believe how many people are in favor of it. Like it's so positive in the comments I'd think it's astroturfing. The code is the result of my work however it got done, and if I don't document or explain it well enough then that's a separate issue. Did you want to see my slack messages to my mentor too? Or how about all the stack overflows I read? Maybe I should voice record all the times I swore about Gary the junior dev not documenting something? It's plenty obvious when the code is AI written it's probably just safe to assume 95% of things have been at least AI assisted. Just look at the drop in SO volume, we're not writing less code we're writing more (rip GitHub uptime).
we've started using parallel repos in diff ways for this reason depending on repo purpose, scope etc.
full private repo including session transcripts, etc. agent attribution etc, with public repo that only shows selected subset without sessions ids, some or all agents, etc.
alternatively, we sometimes also do a separate chat only repo or server etc if cross-team agent chat access worth it and don't bother with private / public just disable agents in code repo
have also done some other variants etc. bit of pain to init config, does help with reducing the agent clutter, improve chat security boundaries in case any keys or sensitive env were in any chats if PII / sensitive data checker miss etc.
I don't see any issue with this at all. I noticed it the other day and thought it was convenient. The same way I let the agent tag the PRs/commits with its name. I want to know what was used, in fact I wish it would identify the model used.
I'm not embarrassed by my LLM usage and I want to provide a full audit trail whenever possible to aid myself in the future.
PS: Claude archives old conversations on your computer after 30days. I've started archiving mine to the side as well for potential future use.
The major problem I see with these are linkrot. Do any of us truly believe these links will work 30 years from now?
Post IPO, many years down the line, a leadership that is eager to cut costs will look at their storage usage and expire 7 year old non-training sessions. Quickest thing to go. I have zero faith in any successful provider getting this right.
Git is supposed to be the durable storage medium, self containing and weathering the passage of time. Now we're littering the repos with a bunch of URLs that are only helpful in the short term.
This is probably a controversial take, but I love this. Back in the early days of claude code I had to write a script (well, claude wrote it) to pull out the session id and append it to every commit. It's a lifesaver when you are trying to debug an old commit to pull up the chat session that actually wrote it.
Just because it's not in the title and most people won't be scrolling all the way down: its only enabled for web and Remote Control sessions, per a maintainer.
I really like working using Claude Code, but Anthropic has a really bad tendency to push out new "features" like this as default-on, through auto-update. That, and their models trying to do everything through bash (including editing files) is enough that I'm seriously looking in to switching harness to pi.
Presumably quietly added default-on because everyone had turned attribution off.
Again, if you challenge it “It came from my harness instructions” and obviously telling it not to in memory is about as successful as… any other instruction in memory, about 60% of the time.
Instead of accepting the default “commit then push,” try “draft a commit message and let me review and revise it first.”
I like attribution in principle, but I'd rather it linked to an open format stored in/with the repository rather than their website.
I needed a reason to look for a different Harness. This could be it
Kind of crazy how a simple QOL lift (stamping a commit to an agent session, or persisting a session logs on cloud) is considered either innovation or controvertial
I like claude code, I use it quite a bit for things, and I don't mind the attribution (I do not plan to deceive people of me using AI or not for a change) and I think a link back to the session is valueable after the fact. At least for me, the session contains a lot of discussion, back and forth, changes from me and more. (Also, if the feature is not on by default, it probably might not exist.)
However, I think claude code needs better change management. It changes quite frequent and I think changes like these should be communicated better in software. (Like a card game may show card changes in game when a patch happened.) It may impact how I do things when creating the commit messages or PRs.
> That is a stupid and evil feature.
I can see arguments for "stupid", but "evil"?
Eh, I don't want the tools I use to stamp their names on everything. It's also not uncommon for me to switch between GPT and Claude or different models in the harness if one of them isn't doing well. GPT-5.6 Terra has been doing a significantly better job at writing concise PR bodies and commit messages than Claude's usual multi paragraph word soup.
I don't need "Created by Claude Code 1.2.3, Opus 4.8 inside tmux inside ghostty on macOS ## on Mac Book Pro 2019 by git 123 in /Users/nijave/repo"
If you want session context, commit the session or prompt or add a git note. I think opaque URIs are the wrong approach unless they're to an issue tracker with more details. Proprietary URIs are not easily usable and interoperable with other tools. Commited information should still be valid and useful in 10 years.
I'm also not sure session is the right level of abstraction. I recently setup Claude Code with subscription delegation to opencode harness with z.ai coding plans and opencode go coding plan and it's been working fairly but there is no singular "session"
Wouldn't think I'd be cheering Antrophic decision, but this is excellent.
They probably were thinking about how that serves them as an ad, not about transparency, but still.
I say they should go one step further and somehow make it harder/inconvenient to turn it off (big tech is good at this already, so...); or, maybe, hide that option behind extra feature under premium subscription or something.
P.S. The comments are pure gold. They don't like they can't fake authorship and have the audacity to be indignant!
Attribution should be opt-in, but they already support it. Via CLAUDE.md where you can specify how exactly AI contribution should be documented. Relying on whatever convention your vendor will establish isn‘t a good idea. Vendors are replaced, project conventions stay, so it‘s better to state your expectations in writing, instead of assuming that someone guesses them right and maintains conformance forever.
Everyone loves AI so much that they want to hide the fact that they're using AI.
Maybe using git notes for the conversation or conversation summary is better.
Beyond "branding", I don't mind this general direction.
There absolutely should be a fool proof undefeatable mechanism that identifies or watermarks code that was completely LLM generated.
If you use LLMs, own it.
I really hate this attribution nonsense ...
On one hand I guess it is fine to automatically tag that the commit was AI-generated. On the other hand, this will happen even if you audit every line and add your own changes too, which means the attribution is misleading.
Issue was closed with an robot-ai comment... Patetic...
The issue comments concerned about IP theft are deeply ironic.
A lot of people say this is a reasonable feature, and I agree (I would strongly consider having it on), but that's not the defense they think it is.
- Having the feature available seems good.
- Having the feature default on is debatable, but not outside the realm of possibility.
- Having the feature default on, without any kind of release notes that say that it happens and link to the option to disable it is clownshoes "bring back the ghost of Steve Jobs to yell at the product team" type behavior.
Also codex cloud and others.
For a good chunk of my AI coding work, I make my own commits. I add Assisited-by: to them. I glance at the AI commit messages, and though I usually come up with my own messages sometimes I paraphrase. This would just make it a bit more annoying to review the AI commit messages, though I could hide it.
Anthropic is right here. You need to clearly define what commits are AI authored or you are conspiring to commit copyfraud.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyfraud
AI does not enjoy copyright protection. Pretending you created something written by AI is copyfraud.
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Luckily I've cancelled my subscription.
Good way to find engineers who don’t know what they are doing and just fire them, from examining their sessions.
I may be missing something, but this is exactly what I want as a default. I want the session links there. I see PRs from my coworkers with session links.
I still get to control whether other people can see the session, but I don’t lose it.
I don’t get the “unprofessional” argument. This is attribution. Attribution is professional. If you don’t want it, you turn it off or rewrite the commit messages. If you are having Claude write the commit messages FOR YOU and you are NOT READING THEM then that’s what’s unprofessional. I am honestly kind of shocked and disappointed by how upset people are by this.