guardrail-commit-hooks-skill_skill

Overview

This skill helps you create, analyze, and manage prek (pre-commit replacement) commit hooks to enforce code quality guardrails. It guides detection of project languages, recommends context-aware hooks, and runs a full setup or update workflow to install and test hooks. Use it to prevent formatting, linting, and secret-leak issues before they reach version control.

How this skill works

The skill inspects the repository for language indicators (package.json, pyproject.toml, go.mod, Cargo.toml, etc.), existing hook tools (.pre-commit-config.yaml, .husky/, lefthook.yml) and monorepo patterns. It fetches the latest prek documentation and release metadata to avoid hardcoded versions, then builds a recommended config that always includes universal safety hooks and selectively includes file-type and language-specific hooks. It can also run install, initial scans, and automated updates.

When to use it

• Initializing a new git repo and you want automated guardrails
• You encounter formatting, linting, or secret-detection failures during commits
• You want to migrate husky or lefthook setups to prek
• You need a fast, dependency-free alternative to pre-commit
• You want to keep hook versions up-to-date across the project

Best practices

• Always fetch the latest hook versions from upstream APIs instead of hardcoding tags
• Include universal hooks (trailing-whitespace, end-of-file-fixer, detect-private-key) for every project
• Only add file-type validators (check-yaml, check-json, check-toml) when matching files are present
• Ask the team before enabling branch-blocking hooks like no-commit-to-branch
• Run prek install and then prek run --all-files to surface existing issues immediately

Example use cases

• Analyze a JS monorepo, detect multiple package.json files, and recommend biome/eslint hooks where relevant
• Set up prek for a new Python project with ruff and universal safety hooks, then run initial fixes
• Migrate an existing husky setup to prek and preserve equivalent checks
• Update external hook revs (ruff, biome, gitleaks) to the latest releases and run the updated checks
• Add gitleaks for comprehensive secret detection across a repository