Compatibility with pre-commit

prek is a practical drop-in replacement for pre-commit, with support for its repositories, configuration files, hooks, and command-line workflows.

What works unchanged

• Existing .pre-commit-config.yaml and .pre-commit-config.yml files work in prek. See Configuration.
• Existing hook repositories and .pre-commit-hooks.yaml manifests work in prek.
• The main user-facing subcommands keep their upstream names: install, run, sample-config, try-repo, uninstall, validate-config, and validate-manifest.

Command compatibility

For a smaller and more consistent command tree, prek hides some compatibility spellings from prek --help and groups some operations under cache or util. Hidden commands are still callable; hiding only keeps them out of the help output.

pre-commit spelling	Preferred prek spelling	Availability in prek
pre-commit install-hooks	prek prepare-hooks	prek install-hooks remains available as a hidden alias.
pre-commit install --install-hooks	prek install --prepare-hooks	--install-hooks remains available as a hidden alias.
pre-commit autoupdate	prek update	prek autoupdate remains available as a hidden alias.
pre-commit gc	prek cache gc	prek gc remains available but is hidden.
pre-commit clean	prek cache clean	prek clean remains available but is hidden.
pre-commit init-templatedir	prek util init-template-dir	prek init-templatedir remains available but is hidden.
pre-commit migrate-config	prek util yaml-to-toml	Configuration migration lives under prek util and targets the native prek.toml format.
pre-commit help <command>	prek <command> --help	Help uses the standard --help flag instead of a separate subcommand.
pre-commit hook-impl	prek hook-impl	Available but hidden because installed Git hooks invoke it internally.

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

This organization keeps the primary help output focused without removing the underlying functionality or compatibility entry points.

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.