pre-commit and pre-push hooks sound smart. I like that those will work the same for any human or any harness vs harness hooks.

Then push straight to main? Or do we need GitHub to help manage the queue https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/configuring-branches...

I think that's orthogonal to testing/ci/hooks and depends on what you're building and what stage you're at. Personally I would not run anything with real users without PRs and branch protection.