Husky and lint-staged serve different but complementary roles in modern JavaScript development workflows. Husky is a Git hook manager that automates script execution at specific Git lifecycle events (pre-commit, pre-push, etc.), while lint-staged is a file processor that runs linters and formatters exclusively on staged Git files. Though often mentioned together, they solve distinct problems: Husky answers 'when should automation run?' and lint-staged answers 'what files should be processed?'
This comparison matters because developers often conflate these tools or wonder if one replaces the other. Husky targets teams needing consistent Git workflow automation across contributors, while lint-staged targets projects where running linters on entire codebases is prohibitively slow. Understanding their boundaries helps you architect efficient CI/CD pipelines and avoid common integration mistakes like running full-repo lints on every commit.
Use both tools together in 90% of JavaScript projects with linting requirements. Husky provides the Git hook infrastructure to enforce quality gates, while lint-staged ensures those gates execute quickly by limiting scope to changed files. The canonical setup is Husky's pre-commit hook invoking npx lint-staged, which runs ESLint and Prettier only on staged files. This combination scales from solo projects to 100+ developer teams without performance degradation.
Choose Husky alone only when you need Git automation without file-specific processing (e.g., running integration tests pre-push, validating commit messages with commitlint, or triggering deployment scripts). Choose lint-staged alone in non-standard workflows where you manually invoke linting via CI scripts or npm tasks but still want staged-file efficiency. Avoid using neither in team projects—manual linting compliance fails at scale, and full-repo lints create commit friction that developers bypass with --no-verify.