Committing

This page answers who commits, how the crumbs left by Express changes feed the commit, and what the person or tool preparing the commit does with them.

The method never commits

No stage of On Track Method commits, pushes, or deploys. Express ends with a report; the Highway ends with ship, which sets the intent status: shipped and regenerates on-track/INDEX.md. The commit belongs to you, or to whatever agent or tool you ask to prepare it.

A Highway track already explains itself at commit time: its intent, spec, and tasks hold the why. Express changes have no track, so each one leaves a crumb instead.

What a crumb gives the commit

Each Express change writes one crumb under on-track/crumbs/, after its check, pass or fail. The shape is in Express changes.

Crumb part	Used for
files and ## Changes	Grouping the diff: which hunks belong to this change.
## Request and ## Cause	Writing the commit message.

The crumb also records under ## Verification the check the agent ran and its result.

Preparing commits from crumbs

Whoever prepares the commits, a person or an agent:

1. Reads the crumbs oldest first. The file name starts with the UTC timestamp, so name order is time order.
2. Groups the diff by each crumb's files and Changes.
3. Writes each commit message from the crumb's Request and Cause.
4. Deletes every crumb it consumed.
5. Deletes every crumb whose files no longer differ from HEAD, since that change is already committed or was undone.

on-track/crumbs/
  2026-11-10-143205Z-footer-typo.md      files: [src/partials/footer.html]
  2026-11-10-151840Z-signup-button.md    files: [src/styles/button.css, tests/button.snap]

Crumbs are local

Crumbs never enter git and never enter the index. ot-init creates on-track/crumbs/.gitignore with the single line *, which ignores the folder and the .gitignore itself. A fresh clone therefore has no crumbs/ folder; the agent creates it, and its .gitignore, when an Express change needs it.

Crumbs live only in the working copy where the change was made. Undoing an Express change deletes its crumb (see Express changes).