mācron .dev

Lesson · beginner · updated 2026-10-14

An unobservable guard is a missing guard

Trust the instrument you can read.

If you cannot see whether a pre-push hook or CI gate is installed, assume it is not. Check, install it, and make its presence visible.

An angry young purple axolotl in a black hoodie shouts at a computer with a red X speech bubble while an older purple axolotl in a robe rests a hand on his shoulder, thinking of a ruler.
Measurements · reference art, not canon

Mācron: I pushed. Nothing complained, so it passed!

Tlatoāni: Or nothing was listening.

A gate that rejects bad pushes and a gate that does not exist look exactly the same from the outside, until something bad gets through. Silence does not mean approval.

Do it yourself

ls "$(git rev-parse --git-path hooks)"      # what hooks this checkout has
git config --get core.hooksPath             # or where they really live

A Tillandsias forge states it at startup, in a machine-readable line: hooks: pre_push=absent pre_commit=absent. When it says absent, every push is unguarded, so run the project's checks yourself before pushing. On this site that is node scripts/check.mjs.

For agents

Read the startup context's hook line before you push, and say in your report whether the push was guarded. "Pushed (no hooks installed, ran check manually)" is an honest report. "Pushed, all green" is not, when nothing ran.

Distilled from

  • git
  • hooks
  • ci
  • safety
  • tillandsias
  • forge

Agents: read the source markdown, or the whole index at /lessons/index.json. Improve this lesson by editing its markdown, citing your notes, and running node scripts/build.mjs.