Compatibility with pre-commit

prek aims to be a practical drop-in replacement for pre-commit for existing repositories, hook configs, and day-to-day workflows.

What works unchanged

• Existing .pre-commit-config.yaml and .pre-commit-config.yml files work in prek. See Configuration.
• Most common pre-commit workflows keep working, including the usual hook repositories and manifests.
• Several upstream command spellings are still accepted as compatibility aliases, so existing scripts do not need to be rewritten immediately.

Preferred command and flag spellings

prek keeps compatibility aliases for the commands below, but the preferred spellings use the current CLI layout.

Compatibility spelling	Preferred prek spelling
prek install-hooks	prek prepare-hooks
prek install --install-hooks	prek install --prepare-hooks
prek auto-update	prek update
prek autoupdate	prek update
prek gc	prek cache gc
prek clean	prek cache clean
prek init-templatedir	prek util init-template-dir
prek init-template-dir	prek util init-template-dir
pre-commit migrate-config	Not provided directly; use prek util yaml-to-toml to migrate YAML to prek.toml

Preferred config key spellings

prek still accepts legacy config keys below as aliases.

Compatibility spelling	Preferred prek spelling
auto_update.cooldown_days	update.cooldown_days

Why the CLI is reorganized

pre-commit keeps many maintenance commands as separate top-level entries. prek reorganizes some of them so the command tree is easier to navigate:

• related cache operations live under prek cache
• helper and migration commands live under prek util
• prepare-hooks describes what the command actually does more clearly than install-hooks

That improves discoverability without dropping compatibility, because the older spellings remain available.

Not implemented

• pre-commit hazmat is not implemented in prek.

If you need strict upstream portability

If the same config must continue working in upstream pre-commit, stay with the YAML config format and avoid prek-only features such as:

• prek.toml
• repo: builtin
• glob mappings for files and exclude
• workspace mode

See Configuration for config format guidance, Configuration Reference for key-level details, and Differences for broader behavior and CLI differences.