Hooks

daft hooks define clear boundaries as your code evolves. They are a local, parallel approach to GitHub Actions — every stage of code's lifecycle gets a well-defined gate.

Each stage in your code's journey through development has different needs:

• When you start isolated work, you want the right env booted up
• When you commit a change, you want format/lint/fast-tests to gate it
• When you merge, you want the equivalent of PR checks to gate it
• When you tear down a worktree, you want artifacts persisted and state reclaimed

daft models each of these as a hook stage. They share one configuration system, one trust model, one job orchestrator.

The boundaries

Stage	Hook type	Boundary semantics	Status
End of clone setup	post-clone	One-shot bootstrap of a fresh repo	Shipped
Start of isolated dev	Worktree hooks (worktree-pre/post-create)	Set up local dev env (deps, services)	Shipped
Sealing a unit of change	Commit hooks	Progressive code-replication boundary — format, lint, fast tests before the change is recorded	Roadmap (#468)
Letting a change escape isolation	Merge hooks (pre-merge, post-merge)	PR-check parity — full tests, integration, security gates before code leaves the branch	Shipped
Reclaiming an isolated env	Worktree teardown (worktree-pre/post-remove)	Teardown, persist artifacts, sync state	Shipped

How daft hooks differ from lefthook

Two distinctions:

1. Lefthook is commit-time-only. daft covers the full code-evolution lifecycle. Commit hooks are one stage among many — they share the trust model, the YAML schema, and the job orchestrator with worktree-lifecycle hooks. (See #468 for the lefthook drop-in plan.)
2. Boundaries before changes leave your machine. CI traditionally runs after code reaches the central repo; daft hooks run before. CI shifts left.

Where to next

• Reference: Lifecycle hooks — types, triggers, env vars, exit-code semantics
• Reference: YAML reference — the full daft.yml schema
• Concept: Job orchestration — parallelism, dependencies, conditions, OS/arch gating
• Concept: Trust & security — why hooks need trust and how the model works
• Status: Roadmap — what's coming for commit-stage hooks
• Recipes: Recipes for Hooks
• CI parity: Recipes → CI parity — run the same daft.yml locally and in CI