Setting up husky and lint-staged for Next.js

Setting up pre-commit hook:

I am assuming you:

• have already created Next.js app.
• know git
• using pnpm and Windows.
• know what is husky lint-staged eslint prettier

Husky is a popular Git hook tool that helps developers enforce and automate certain actions and scripts before committing or pushing code to a Git repository, like linting code, running tests, formatting code, or performing other custom action.
lint-staged makes quality checks run faster by only checking files you're about to commit.

pnpm add --save-dev husky prettier lint-staged eslint

pnpm exec husky init
# or with npm: npx husky init

1. Ensure package.json has the prepare script so Husky is installed after pnpm install:

{
  "scripts": {
    "prepare": "husky"
  }
}

Now init husky:

pnpm exec husky init

and edit .husky/pre-commit and add pnpm exec lint-staged.

Edit package.json and add:

"lint-staged": {
    "*.{js,jsx,ts,tsx}": [
      "eslint --max-warnings=0 --fix",
      "prettier --write"
    ],
    "*.{json,md,css,scss,html,yml,yaml}": [
      "prettier --write"
    ]
  }

This configuration tells lint-staged to run ESLint with automatic fixing followed by Prettier formatting on JavaScript files, and only Prettier on JSON, CSS, and Markdown files.

Testing pre-commit hook:

Edit any file and add following:

const a = 0;

This is an error variable a is not used.

Now run

git add .
git commit -m "Test commit" # this will fail.

Example expected output:

✔ Backed up original state in git stash (93148b8)
✔ Hiding unstaged changes to partially staged files...
⚠ Running tasks for staged files...
  ❯ package.json — 5 files
    ❯ *.{js,jsx,ts,tsx} — 1 file
      ✖ eslint --max-warnings=0 --fix [FAILED]
      ◼ prettier --write
    ✔ *.{json,md,css,scss,html,yml,yaml} — 3 files
↓ Skipped because of errors from tasks.
↓ Skipped because of errors from tasks.
✔ Reverting to original state because of errors...
✔ Cleaning up temporary files...

✖ eslint --max-warnings=0 --fix:

[...]\app\page.tsx
  3:3  warning  'a' is assigned a value but never used  @typescript-eslint/no-unused-vars

✖ 1 problem (0 errors, 1 warning)

ESLint found too many warnings (maximum: 0).
husky - pre-commit script failed (code 1)

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Debugging lint-staged issues

When lint-staged doesn't behave as expected, you can debug it by running it with verbose output:

pnpm dlx lint-staged --verbose

You can also test your configuration without making a commit:

pnpm dlx lint-staged --debug

Notes

• CI/CD should also run pnpm run lint and pnpm run format (or format:write) to enforce consistency.
• Keep local Node/pnpm versions in sync across the team to avoid formatter diffs.

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Written on 9/3/25