Generated Claude Code hooks fail noisily when the binary is not on PATH, and fire on every Bash command

[Warhorze]

Summary

code-review-graph install (v2.3.2, skills.py → generate_hooks_config()) writes Claude Code hooks into .claude/settings.json that have two issues:

1. No install/PATH guard

The generated hooks call the bare binary:

{ "type": "command", "command": "code-review-graph update --skip-flows", "timeout": 30 }

When the package is installed in a project virtualenv (the common case), the binary is not on the PATH that Claude Code's /bin/sh sees, so every Edit/Write/Bash tool call surfaces:

PostToolUse:Edit hook error
Failed with non-blocking status code: /bin/sh: 1: code-review-graph: not found

Notably, the git pre-commit hook installed by the very same install command already does this correctly:

if command -v code-review-graph >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    code-review-graph detect-changes --brief || true
fi

The Claude Code hooks just lack the same guard. Suggested fix in generate_hooks_config() — resolve the project venv binary first and exit silently when absent:

CRG="$CLAUDE_PROJECT_DIR/.venv/bin/code-review-graph"; command -v "$CRG" >/dev/null 2>&1 || CRG=code-review-graph; command -v "$CRG" >/dev/null 2>&1 || exit 0; "$CRG" update --skip-flows

2. Matcher is too broad

"matcher": "Edit |Write|Bash" means the graph update runs after every shell command — git status, ls, test runs, everything — not just file changes. Edit|Write covers the cases where the graph can actually become stale from within Claude Code; if Bash-driven file mutations are a concern, a scoped if filter (e.g. on git mutation commands) would be far cheaper than firing on all of Bash.

Environment

• code-review-graph 2.3.2 (PyPI), installed in a project venv
• Claude Code on Linux (WSL2), hooks executed via /bin/sh

Happy to provide more detail if useful.

[itxaiohanglover]

Ran into this myself — the bare code-review-graph call in hooks fails silently on venv installs and the Bash matcher fires on literally every shell command, which is rough.

Opened #565 — adds a command -v guard (same pattern the git pre-commit hook already uses), narrows the matcher to Edit|Write, and switches to git rev-parse --show-toplevel so the path isn't hardcoded. Also covers #558 in the same PR since they're the same function.