🛡️ What is Guardy?

A comprehensive overview of Guardy - the fast, secure git hooks and secret scanning tool

Overview

Guardy is a high-performance code security suite written in Rust that provides three core capabilities:

Git Hooks Management - Native, fast git hooks with parallel execution
Secret Scanning - Multi-threaded detection of secrets and credentials
File Synchronization - Keep configuration files in sync across repositories

Unlike traditional Node.js-based tools (Husky) or Python-based solutions (pre-commit), Guardy is a single native binary with zero runtime dependencies, making it incredibly fast and reliable.

Why Guardy?

The Problem

Modern development teams face several challenges:

Security Gaps: Developers accidentally commit secrets, API keys, and credentials
Inconsistent Standards: Different team members use different tools and configurations
Performance Issues: Node.js/Python-based hooks slow down the development workflow
Complex Setup: Multiple tools required for hooks, scanning, and file sync
AI-Assisted Coding Risks: LLMs may generate or expose sensitive data

The Solution

Guardy addresses these challenges with a unified, high-performance approach:

Single Binary: No runtime dependencies - just download and run
Native Performance: Written in Rust for maximum speed and reliability
Parallel Execution: Run multiple checks simultaneously
Smart Caching: Skip unnecessary work with intelligent file tracking
Comprehensive Security: 100+ built-in patterns for secret detection

Key Features

🚀 Lightning Fast

Multi-threaded scanning - Utilizes all CPU cores
Parallel hook execution - Run multiple commands simultaneously
Smart file filtering - Only scan what's necessary
Native binary - No interpreter overhead

🔒 Comprehensive Security

100+ detection patterns - API keys, passwords, tokens, certificates
Entropy analysis - Detect high-entropy strings that look like secrets
Custom patterns - Define your own regex patterns
Allowlisting - Exclude false positives

🪝 Flexible Git Hooks

All standard hooks - pre-commit, commit-msg, pre-push, and more
Built-in actions - Secret scanning, conventional commits validation
Custom commands - Run any command or script
Template variables - Access staged files, commit messages, etc.

🔄 File Synchronization

Repository sources - Sync from Git repositories
Version pinning - Lock to specific tags, branches, or commits
Selective sync - Include/exclude patterns for precise control
Conflict detection - Know when local changes differ from source

Who Should Use Guardy?

Development Teams

Teams that need to:

Enforce security standards across all developers
Prevent accidental secret commits
Maintain consistent code quality
Share configuration files across projects

Security-Conscious Organizations

Organizations that require:

Compliance with security policies
Protection against data leaks
Audit trails for security checks
Fast, reliable security tooling

Open Source Projects

Projects that want to:

Protect contributors from accidental leaks
Maintain high code quality standards
Provide easy setup for new contributors
Run efficiently in CI/CD pipelines

Performance Comparison

Guardy significantly outperforms traditional tools:

Operation	Guardy	Husky (Node.js)	pre-commit (Python)
Startup	< 1ms	~100ms	~150ms
Secret Scan (1000 files)	~50ms	~800ms	~1200ms
Hook Execution	Native speed	Node overhead	Python overhead
Memory Usage	~5MB	~50MB	~30MB

How It Works

Architecture

┌─────────────────┐
│ Git Hook Event  │
└────────┬────────┘
         │
         ▼
    ┌─────────┐
    │ GUARDY  │
    └────┬────┘
         │
         ├──► Load Configuration (.guardy.yaml)
         │
         └──► Execute Hooks (Parallel)
              │
              ├──► Built-in Actions
              │    ├─► Secret Scanning
              │    └─► Commit Validation
              │
              └──► Custom Commands
                   └─► User Scripts
                        │
                        ▼
                ┌──────────────┐
                │ Report Pass/ │
                │     Fail     │
                └──────────────┘