The three messages you give above are perfectly good members of a cleaned-up history. Each has a clear meaning, and small is good when it comes time do bisect.

The three messages you give above are perfectly good members of a cleaned-up history. Each has a clear meaning, and small is good when it comes time do bisect. Messages like "stuff", "it works", "xxx" and "everything I did last month" are not so good, but very common. Moreover if you are in the habit of avoiding them -- that is having each commit do one thing with a clear intension -- then you will keep finding times when you wish you had done something differently an hour ago. And then `rebase -i` is you friend.