It was my comment you replied to. I meant for running scripts locally, before pushing/pulling/commiting etc. The distribution part is just those scripts being by default in a folder that is not tracked by git (.git/hooks), but you can change it in your config file. Hooks should be able to run any executable script file, so there isn't really any limits outside of convenience to what you can make it do.
You probably could use server-side git hooks just fine as an alternative if you self host the repo though, but I would assume if you are using github, or another hosting service, their tools are probably best/easiest/most convenient for their own platform.
You probably could use server-side git hooks just fine as an alternative if you self host the repo though, but I would assume if you are using github, or another hosting service, their tools are probably best/easiest/most convenient for their own platform.