apf_portal/decisions/0007-pre-commit-hooks-and-conventional-commits.md

status, date, decision-makers, tags

status	date	decision-makers	tags
accepted	2026-04-29	R&D Lead	process

Pre-commit hooks and Conventional Commits

Context and Problem Statement

Without local enforcement, trivial issues — unformatted code, lint errors, ill-formed commit messages — only surface in CI. Each round-trip costs minutes of feedback latency and pollutes the commit history with fixup noise. We need a lightweight, well-known mechanism that catches these issues at commit time and enforces a consistent commit message format, while staying fast enough not to discourage frequent commits.

Which tooling do we adopt for git pre-commit checks and commit message validation?

Decision Drivers

• Fast feedback: catch trivial issues locally; CI is defense in depth, not the first line.
• Consistency of code style and commit history across contributors.
• Conventional commit history that machines can read (later automation: changelog, release notes, semver bumps).
• Mainstream tooling — no exotic shell hooks, no single-maintainer projects.
• Easy onboarding: no extra runtime to manage beyond Node/pnpm.

Considered Options

• Husky + lint-staged + commitlint with Conventional Commits. (Chosen.)
• No git hooks — rely on CI.
• pre-commit (Python framework).
• lefthook (Go single-binary hook manager).
• Custom shell scripts in .git/hooks/.

Decision Outcome

Chosen option: Husky + lint-staged + commitlint, with Conventional Commits as the commit-message specification.

Hooks installed under .husky/:

Hook	Action
pre-commit	pnpm exec lint-staged — runs lint and format on staged files only
commit-msg	pnpm exec commitlint --edit "$1" — validates the commit message against Conventional Commits

Configuration:

• package.json: "prepare": "husky" script (Husky 9+ pattern), lint-staged config block.
• commitlint.config.cjs: module.exports = { extends: ['@commitlint/config-conventional'] }.

Scope of lint-staged: only fast checks on staged files (lint, format). Type-check and tests stay in pnpm nx affected -t lint test build in CI — running the full graph on every commit would slow commits unacceptably and discourage frequent commits.

CI re-runs the same checks (defense in depth — hooks can be bypassed with --no-verify).

Consequences

• Good, because trivial issues are caught locally and don't pollute PR history.
• Good, because Conventional Commits gives us a machine-readable history — enables automated changelogs, semver inference, and release tooling without retroactive cleanup.
• Good, because Husky / lint-staged / commitlint are the de facto standard in JS/TS projects — wide community, abundant documentation, low surprise factor.
• Good, because lint-staged keeps commit time low (only changed files are checked).
• Bad, because hooks can be bypassed (git commit --no-verify); CI must remain authoritative.
• Bad, because Husky 9 changed its installation pattern (no husky install, just husky); contributors with stale instructions can be confused. Mitigated by the setup guide.
• Bad, because Conventional Commits adds a small learning curve; mitigated by IDE plugins, commitlint error messages, and a one-page contributor cheatsheet (future doc).

Confirmation

• package.json declares husky, lint-staged, @commitlint/cli, @commitlint/config-conventional as devDependencies.
• package.json has a "prepare": "husky" script.
• .husky/pre-commit runs pnpm exec lint-staged and is executable.
• .husky/commit-msg runs pnpm exec commitlint --edit "$1" and is executable.
• commitlint.config.cjs exists at the workspace root and extends @commitlint/config-conventional.
• CI pipeline (future ADR) re-runs lint and format checks on every push, plus a Conventional Commits validation on the PR commit range.

Pros and Cons of the Options

Husky + lint-staged + commitlint (chosen)

• Good, because the trio is the de facto standard in the JS/TS ecosystem.
• Good, because each tool is single-purpose and composable.
• Good, because the configuration lives with the repo and is versioned with the code.
• Bad, because three packages instead of one — slightly more dependency surface.

No git hooks

• Good, because zero local setup.
• Bad, because every trivial issue costs a CI round-trip. Wasteful and noisy.

pre-commit (Python)

• Good, because language-agnostic, used in mixed-language repos (Python + JS + Go).
• Bad, because adds a Python runtime dependency to a Node-only project — extra setup for contributors, especially under WSL where Python toolchains are not always uniform.

lefthook

• Good, because single Go binary, very fast, parallel hook execution, declarative YAML config.
• Bad, because smaller community than Husky in JS/TS land; less prior art and fewer answers when something breaks.
• Status: kept on the watch list for re-evaluation if commit performance becomes a pain.

Custom shell scripts in .git/hooks/

• Good, because zero dependency.
• Bad, because hooks aren't versioned with the repo by default; a wrapper layer is needed anyway. Bricolage.

More Information

• Husky: https://typicode.github.io/husky/
• lint-staged: https://github.com/lint-staged/lint-staged
• commitlint: https://commitlint.js.org/
• Conventional Commits: https://www.conventionalcommits.org/
• Related: future quality / CI ADR will re-run these checks as defense in depth.