Hooks not triggered when working in a git worktree

[yuankuns]

Summary

Claude Code hooks defined in .claude/settings.json are not triggered when the active working directory is a git worktree (created via git worktree add).

Environment

• Claude Code CLI
• Git worktree setup: main repo at /path/to/repo, worktree at /path/to/repo/worktrees/feature-branch

Steps to reproduce

1. Set up a hook in .claude/settings.json at the main repo root, e.g. a PreToolUse hook on Bash that intercepts git commit
2. Create a git worktree: git worktree add worktrees/my-feature -b my-feature
3. Open a Claude Code session with the worktree as the working directory
4. Run git commit from within the session

Expected: The PreToolUse hook fires and runs the configured command.

Actual: The hook is silently skipped. Claude Code does not find .claude/settings.json because it looks relative to the current working directory, not the git repository root.

Root cause

In a git worktree, the .git entry is a file (not a directory) that points back to the main repo. The .claude/ directory lives in the main repo root, not in the worktree directory. Claude Code appears to resolve .claude/settings.json relative to the process working directory rather than using git rev-parse --show-toplevel to locate the repository root and find .claude/ from there.

Impact

Any project that uses .claude/hooks/ for pre-commit checks, linters, or test runners will silently lose those guardrails whenever a developer works inside a git worktree. In our case, a PreToolUse hook runs cargo test inside Docker before every commit — this hook was bypassed in the worktree, causing tests to run directly on the host and inadvertently interact with the local tmux session.

Suggested fix

When resolving .claude/settings.json, fall back to git rev-parse --show-toplevel to find the repository root and look for .claude/ there, so hooks work consistently whether the session is started from the main worktree or any linked worktree.

[github-actions]

Found 2 possible duplicate issues:

1. [BUG] Skills and hooks not available in worktrees created by claude -w #45054
2. [BUG] Project settings.json not found in bare repo + worktree setup #40398

This issue will be automatically closed as a duplicate in 3 days.

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🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[tomo-kay]

For anyone hitting this with a third-party Claude Code plugin: bkit v2.1.2 (https://github.com/popup-studio-ai/bkit-claude-code/releases/tag/v2.1.2) ships a session-start guard that detects linked git worktrees by comparing git rev-parse --show-toplevel against --git-common-dir. On detection it:

1. Emits a clear stderr warning so users know hooks may not fire reliably in this checkout.
2. Writes a flag file (.bkit/runtime/worktree-warning.flag) so other plugin components can surface a UI banner.
3. Continues running — the guard is informational, not blocking.

This is a workaround, not a fix for the upstream behavior, but it makes the failure mode visible instead of silent. Implementation: lib/core/worktree-detector.js + hooks/startup/context-init.js in the bkit repo. Happy to upstream the detection logic if it would be useful.

[github-actions]

Closing for now — inactive for too long. Please open a new issue if this is still relevant.

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically locked since it was closed and has not had any activity for 7 days. If you're experiencing a similar issue, please file a new issue and reference this one if it's relevant.