I agree such patterns are indicative of systemic issues. In my experiences, those process issues emit their own structured behavioral patterns. In your example, the "." commit is now a convention that indicates a specific process happened. I am not certain what the costs of fixing the root problem are, though I'd anticipate they could be expensive and difficult at this point given the time commitment to restructure the repo and automate the scss=>css. Whereas the expense of an esoteric "." commit appears relatively cheap given the need of a human to untangle the mess which cannot be automated away (without a redesign).
