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Jensen

The git guard

The git guard runs from your project’s own git hooks, so it fires on every commit however it was made, from a terminal, from the editor, from an assistant, or from another tool. Any hook you already had is chained and still runs.

What it refuses

Section titled “What it refuses”
  • A commit carrying a secret or a junk file.
  • A push that would discard commits the remote already has.
  • A commit to a branch your project’s policy protects.

When it blocks you

Section titled “When it blocks you”

Open the right panel with Cmd J, pick Git, then Versioning. The commit box reads Commit blocked with the number of findings, and lists one row per finding naming the rule and the file it matched.

Some matches are correct-looking and wrong, a test fixture or a documented example key. Accept on that row clears it. Acceptance is stored as a fingerprint, so that one reviewed match stops blocking future commits while every other rule stays in force. The fix the guard points at is never “turn the guard off”.

Committing from a shell prints the same refusal:

Terminal window
$ git commit -m "wip"
jensen: commit blocked, staged changes contain secrets or junk:
  env-file in .env (.env)
Remove them, or accept a finding in Jensen. To bypass once: git commit --no-verify

What counts as a secret

Section titled “What counts as a secret”

Private key blocks, provider secret keys, AWS access keys, Google API keys, Slack tokens, version-control tokens including fine-grained ones, GitLab tokens, Stripe secret keys, JSON web tokens, and generic API keys.

What counts as junk

Section titled “What counts as junk”

Dependency directories, .env and .env.* files, assistant configuration such as CLAUDE.md and .claude/, build output directories, key and certificate files including .pem, .key, id_rsa, .pfx, .p12 and .keystore, and operating-system cruft such as .DS_Store and Thumbs.db.

Blobs over 5 MB are flagged as well.

A push that would discard history

Section titled “A push that would discard history”
Terminal window
$ git push
jensen: push blocked, it would discard commits the remote already has:
Reconcile with a pull or a rebase. To bypass once: git push --no-verify

A commit your branch policy forbids

Section titled “A commit your branch policy forbids”

A production branch is protected where the commit is typed, and not later at the provider. A project with no branch policy is never blocked by this. Set the policy in Settings, Workspace, Git. See Environments.

It drafts your commit message

Section titled “It drafts your commit message”

Commit without supplying a message and the guard writes one into your editor buffer, fully editable. With no assistant configured, or nothing staged worth describing, git opens exactly as it normally would.

Screening before an agent commits

Section titled “Screening before an agent commits”

The same rules run in three places, which is deliberate.

  1. In an agent run, as a step before the commit.
  2. In the guard, on your git hooks, as the backstop for anything that did not come through a run.
  3. On demand, as an opt-in agent hook that scans secrets before every commit. See Agent hooks.

Every blocking finding has to be resolved or accepted before the commit is made, whoever staged it.

Bypassing once, and removing it

Section titled “Bypassing once, and removing it”

Both refusals honour git’s own flag, which makes a bypass a visible act rather than a setting you forget you changed.