Skip to content

prek

prek

pre-commit is a framework to run hooks written in many languages, and it manages the language toolchain and dependencies for running the hooks.

prek is a reimagined version of pre-commit, built in Rust. It is designed to be a faster, dependency-free and drop-in alternative for it, while also providing some additional long-requested features.

Note

Although prek is pretty new, it’s already powering real‑world projects like Apache Airflow, and more projects are picking it up—see Who is using prek?. If you’re looking for an alternative to pre-commit, please give it a try—we’d love your feedback!

Please note that some subcommands and languages are still missing for full drop‑in parity with pre-commit. Track the remaining gaps here: TODO.

Features

  • 🚀 A single binary with no dependencies, does not require Python or any other runtime.
  • ⚡ Faster than pre-commit and more efficient in disk space usage.
  • 🔄 Fully compatible with the original pre-commit configurations and hooks.
  • 🏗️ Built-in support for monorepos (i.e. workspace mode).
  • 🐍 Integration with uv for managing Python virtual environments and dependencies.
  • 🛠️ Improved toolchain installations for Python, Node.js, Go, Rust and Ruby, shared between hooks.
  • 📦 Built-in Rust-native implementation of some common hooks.

Why prek?

prek is faster

  • It is multiple times faster than pre-commit and takes up half the disk space.
  • It redesigned how hook environments and toolchains are managed, they are all shared between hooks, which reduces the disk space usage and speeds up the installation process.
  • Repositories are cloned in parallel, and hooks are installed in parallel if their dependencies are disjoint.
  • It uses uv for creating Python virtualenvs and installing dependencies, which is known for its speed and efficiency.
  • It implements some common hooks in Rust, built in prek, which are faster than their Python counterparts.
  • It supports repo: builtin for offline, zero-setup hooks, which is not available in pre-commit.

prek provides a better user experience

  • No need to install Python or any other runtime, just download a single binary.
  • No hassle with your Python version or virtual environments, prek automatically installs the required Python version and creates a virtual environment for you.
  • Built-in support for workspaces (or monorepos), each subproject can have its own .pre-commit-config.yaml file.
  • prek run has some nifty improvements over pre-commit run, such as:
  • prek run --directory <dir> runs hooks for files in the specified directory, no need to use git ls-files -- <dir> | xargs pre-commit run --files anymore.
  • prek run --last-commit runs hooks for files changed in the last commit.
  • prek run [HOOK] [HOOK] selects and runs multiple hooks.
  • prek list command lists all available hooks, their ids, and descriptions, providing a better overview of the configured hooks.
  • prek provides shell completions for prek run <hook_id> command, making it easier to run specific hooks without remembering their ids.

For more detailed improvements prek offers, take a look at Difference from pre-commit.

Who is using prek?

prek is pretty new, but it is already being used or recommend by some projects and organizations:

Badges

Show that your project uses prek with a badge in your README:

prek

Markdown

[![prek](https://img.shields.io/endpoint?url=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/j178/prek/master/docs/assets/badge-v0.json)](https://github.com/j178/prek)

HTML

<a href="https://github.com/j178/prek">
  <img src="https://img.shields.io/endpoint?url=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/j178/prek/master/docs/assets/badge-v0.json" alt="prek">
</a>

reStructuredText (RST)

.. image:: https://img.shields.io/endpoint?url=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/j178/prek/master/docs/assets/badge-v0.json
   :target: https://github.com/j178/prek
   :alt: prek

Getting Started