Release Please cannot parse any commits have merge commit with Typo not following Conventional Commits Format

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- What you're trying to do

Create a release

- What code you've already tried

Standard Release please using conventional commits format

- Any error messages you're getting

`release-please failed: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'startsWith')`

I've tried committing again with a proper conventional commit message.

Additionally, I tried to lower the release search depth and commit search depth in the config and while I see it in the output/echo it's still looking at 25+ commits before it finally throw that it can't parse ANY commits, however this started when I accidentally had a typo in my commit message

❯ release search depth: 1
❯ Fetching releases with cursor undefined
❯ Found release for path ., v1.0.7
❯ release for path: ., version: 1.0.7, sha: d71b3[26](https://github.com/linchpin/linchpin-blocks/actions/runs/12282164128/job/34272740370#step:2:27)762dda80ef918f33c354096bd955bfd60
✔ Collecting commits since all latest releases
❯ commit search depth: 1
❯ Set(1) { 'd71b326762dda80ef918f33c354096bd955bfd60' }
❯ Fetching merge commits on branch main with cursor: undefined
...

...
❯ commit could not be parsed: ef89574b0415ad615c5662d7683c8446007c84ed Merge pull request #99 from linchpin/issue/LINCHPIN-4178
⚠ No latest release pull request found.
❯ commit could not be parsed: ca21789c498d5394d194306306ca35786570497e Merge pull request #96 from linchpin/renovate/npm-frontend
❯ commit could not be parsed: 72a7d2357dd52ad1fdbdc4147ad1f5b6cae8b5c7 Merge pull request #97 from linchpin/renovate/major-wordpress-monorepo
❯ commit could not be parsed: 1bcd20be531c7249fb71588cf0b564276788d615 Merge pull request #[95](https://github.com/linchpin/linchpin-blocks/actions/runs/12282164128/job/34272740370#step:2:96) from linchpin/renovate/npm-dev-dependencies
❯ commits: 15
✔ Considering: 15 commits
❯ component:
❯ pull request title pattern: undefined

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Start by reproducing the release-please run with the reported merge-commit history, malformed conventional-commit message, and release and commit search depths set to 1. Trace the commit-parsing path around the undefined startsWith error and verify how merge commits are handled. Done means the run no longer crashes and the configured search depth is respected while reporting unparseable commits.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.