Creating a Random Git Branch or Commit on the Cli

#git #github #bash #cli
There are times when you need unique branch names or commit messages. This is easy to do directly from the command line.

If you use GitHub workflows, GitHub can get confused when a branch name is reused after it has already been merged. This often happens with generic branch names like fix-typo. The same problem comes up when troubleshooting code that requires many merges, such as infrastructure code or workflow changes.

In those cases I use variations of these commands that use the date and jot commands

# create branch named like fix-typo-20251225-2250-0027
❯ git checkout -b \
  "fix-typo-$(date "+%Y-%m-%dT%H%M")-$(jot -w %04d -r 1 1 100)"

# commit with message `fix: attempt 1234`
> git commit -m \
  "fix: attempt $(jot -w %04d -r 1 1 100)"
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