Hooks

Part of the Git course

Every team has a rule that everyone agrees with and everyone forgets. Run the formatter before committing. Do not commit the debugging print statement you added at 2am. Do not commit a file with your password in it. These rules get written in a wiki page nobody reads, and then somebody breaks one, and code review turns into a game of spotting the thing a machine could have spotted instantly.

A hook is a script that Git runs automatically at a specific moment in your workflow, such as just before a commit is recorded or just before a push leaves your machine. Think of it as a spellchecker for your commits: not a person nagging you, just a small automatic check that happens at exactly the moment it is useful, and that can stop you before the mistake becomes permanent.