activate-git-hooks.md

domain	team-process
type	how-to
owner	<!-- team/role that owns tooling -->
last_reviewed

How to Activate the Git Hooks

This repo ships two shell-based hooks under .githooks/ (no runtime or dependencies required), so they work identically regardless of the project's language.

Steps

Running ./bin/mat setup (or .\bin\mat.ps1 on native Windows) from the repository root does this for you, along with the rest of local project setup. To activate just the hooks by hand:

git config core.hooksPath .githooks

That's it! This is a one-time, per-clone setting stored in your local Git config, not committed to the repo.

What each hook does

Hook	Runs on	Purpose
commit-msg	every git commit	Rejects commit messages that don't follow Conventional Commits
pre-push	every git push	Placeholder; uncomment the test/build checks inside .githooks/pre-push to run them before every push

Why this is optional but recommended

Activating the hook is not required to contribute. commit-msg validation also runs in CI on every pull request as a backstop, so a bad commit message is still caught before merge even if you skip this step. Activating it locally just gives you the same feedback earlier, before you push.

See also

• Commit Conventions
• operations/concept/ci-cd-pipeline