Creating Guards

creating-guards

Rule: a guard is a pure function that RETURNS a verdict — it never calls process.exit and never runs logic at import top level beyond one runGuard(check). That contract is what lets the per-event dispatcher (_shared/dispatch.mts) import every guard for an event into ONE node process (one @socketsecurity/lib-stable import) instead of paying a node cold-start + lib import per guard on every tool call.

The contract (_shared/guard.mts)

import { block, notify, bashGuard, runGuard } from '../_shared/guard.mts'
// editGuard for Edit/Write/MultiEdit hooks; both if it handles both.

export const check = bashGuard((command, payload) => {
  if (<not applicable>) { return undefined }   // allow, silent
  if (<bypass present>) { return undefined }
  return block(`[my-guard] Blocked: …\n  Fix: …`)  // or notify(…)
})

await runGuard(check)

Three verdicts — pick by intended behavior:

• block(message) — prints message to stderr and sets exitCode 2 (Claude Code blocks the tool call). Use for a -guard.
• notify(message) — prints to stderr, exit 0, the tool call proceeds. Use for a -nudge / -nudge.
• undefined — allow, silent.

Shape by event

• Bash hook → export const check = bashGuard((command, payload) => …)
• Edit/Write/MultiEdit hook → export const check = editGuard((filePath, content, payload) => …)
• Stop hook (no tool_name/command/file) → export const check = (payload) => … (no adapter; read payload.transcript_path etc.)
• Always end with exactly one top-level await runGuard(check).

Hard rules (enforced by socket/guard-contract)

• ZERO process.exit(...) — a hard exit in a shared dispatcher kills the loop and silently skips every later guard.
• ZERO process.argv[1] entrypoint gates — they misfire when the dispatcher imports the module.
• No bespoke process.stdin reader — read the payload only through the harness / readPayload.
• export const check + one await runGuard(check). Unit tests import check and call it directly (no spawning).

Not a guard?

A pure side-effect hook (output transformer, installer, sweeper) with no block and no user-facing message does NOT fit the verdict contract — leave it as its own spawned command and skip the conversion.

Wire-up

Registration is generated: node scripts/fleet/gen/hook-dispatch.mts classifies every guard and moves contract-conformant ones into _shared/dispatch-manifest.json (dispatched) — non-conformant ones stay spawned. Run it after adding/converting a guard; --check (in check --all) fails when the wiring is stale.