diff --git a/.github/workflows/run-test-suite.yml b/.github/workflows/run-test-suite.yml
index b9cbb5fe6c..4f47b0cae3 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/run-test-suite.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/run-test-suite.yml
@@ -146,8 +146,11 @@ jobs:
       # Also, it means code coverage is only generated if the test suite is
       # passing at least for that job, avoiding useless coverage reports.
       uses: codecov/codecov-action@v3
+      # Warning: GitHub Actions expressions require single-quoted strings.
+      # Double quotes will break workflow validation (even though YAML allows
+      # them). So don't change the quoting below.
       if: |
-        matrix.os == "ubuntu-latest" && matrix.python-version == "3.10"
+        matrix.os == 'ubuntu-latest' && matrix.python-version == '3.10'
       with:
         file: |
           ${{ github.workspace }}/main/cf/test/cf_coverage_reports/coverage.xml
diff --git a/.pre-commit-config.yaml b/.pre-commit-config.yaml
index 3aa8dd0405..2351cbcdac 100644
--- a/.pre-commit-config.yaml
+++ b/.pre-commit-config.yaml
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ repos:
   # Use specific format-enforcing pre-commit hooks from the core library
   # with the default configuration (see pre-commit.com for documentation)
   - repo: https://github.com/pre-commit/pre-commit-hooks
-    rev: v4.6.0
+    rev: v6.0.0
     hooks:
       - id: check-ast
       - id: debug-statements
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ repos:
   # (see https://black.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ for documentation and see
   # the cf-python pyproject.toml file for our custom black configuration)
   - repo: https://github.com/ambv/black
-    rev: 24.4.2
+    rev: 25.12.0
     hooks:
       - id: black
         language_version: python3
@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@ repos:
   # (see https://flake8.pycqa.org/en/latest/ for documentation and see
   # the cf-python .flake8 file for our custom flake8 configuration)
   - repo: https://github.com/PyCQA/flake8
-    rev: 7.1.0
+    rev: 7.3.0
     hooks:
       - id: flake8
 
@@ -62,7 +62,7 @@ repos:
   # compatible with 'black' with the lines set to ensure so in the repo's
   # pyproject.toml. Other than that and the below, no extra config is required.
   - repo: https://github.com/pycqa/isort
-    rev: 5.13.2
+    rev: 7.0.0
     hooks:
       - id: isort
         name: isort (python)
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index efc6ea52ec..8086e1e8a6 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -15,8 +15,12 @@ profile = "black"
 # ... and since we set this against the black default line length:
 line_length=79
 # Prevent isort from auto-formatting '__init__.py' file imports because
-# they require a specific non-aphabetical (etc.) ordering else they will
-# cause errors due to bad or circular importing across the modules.
+# they require a specific non-alphabetical (etc.) ordering else they will
+# cause errors due to bad or circular importing across the modules. Also
+# skip the recipes, since we have a certain import order there for clarity
+# and to avoid incompatibilities with some matplotlib and esmpy versions
+# which can cause a seg fault if cf-plot/matplotlib is imported first.
 extend_skip_glob = [
   "**/__init__.py",
+  "docs/source/recipes/**",
 ]