[HN Gopher] Claude Code now supports hooks
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Claude Code now supports hooks
        
       Author : ramoz
       Score  : 348 points
       Date   : 2025-07-01 00:01 UTC (23 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (docs.anthropic.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (docs.anthropic.com)
        
       | ramoz wrote:
       | Really excited to see this implemented.
       | 
       | Hooks will be important for "context engineering" and runtime
       | verification of an agent's performance. This extends to things
       | such as enterprise compliance and oversight of agentic behavior.
       | 
       | Nice of Anthropic to have supported the idea of this feature from
       | a github issue submission: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-
       | code/issues/712
        
         | chisleu wrote:
         | It is indeed. I don't use Claude Code. I use Cline which is a
         | VS Code extension (cline.bot).
         | 
         | This is a pretty killer feature that I would expect to find in
         | all the coding agents soon.
        
       | wilde wrote:
       | This is nice but I really wish they'd just let me fork the damn
       | thing already.
        
       | petethepig wrote:
       | Would love to see this in Cursor. My workaround right now is
       | using a bunch of rules that sort of work some of the time.
        
         | ed_mercer wrote:
         | As an ex-Cursor user myself, is there any reason that you're
         | still using it? Genuinely curious.
        
           | porker wrote:
           | That tab autocomplete and predicting what I'm going to edit
           | next is the best I've found.
           | 
           | The rest I can take or leave (plenty of good or better
           | alternatives)
        
             | wahnfrieden wrote:
             | Claude Code has Cursor integration you can use both
        
           | jerrygoyal wrote:
           | I've been using cursor for last 1 year but haven't tried
           | Claude Code, Do you think it has gotten better?
        
             | myflash13 wrote:
             | Yes, I abandoned Cursor recently and went back to Claude
             | Code. Two main reasons: 1. The "plan mode" for Claude makes
             | it execute complex tasks much more reliably. It
             | automatically keeps track of todos and completes them. With
             | Cursor I'm constantly fighting with it. 2. I can now use my
             | IDE of choice (JetBrains) rather than a poor fork of VS
             | Code. 3. Daily usage limits now included in the monthly
             | $20/month Claude Pro plan seems to be enough for my daily
             | needs. No extra costs.
        
             | matltc wrote:
             | I used GitHub copilot in my vscode setup. Claude Code is
             | its agent mode on steroids: highly configurable, seems to
             | have much larger context window, can write "memories", has
             | hooks now. Highly recommend trying it out.
             | 
             | The time it saved me in first few hours of use easily made
             | the monthly fee worthwhile. I did hit a limit near the
             | four-hour mark (resets every five hours for us Pro
             | subscribers), but just went and reviewed the ~1700 lines it
             | added in that time and cleaned up the config files (updated
             | todos etc)
        
           | Aeolun wrote:
           | Cursor is still the best when you don't have access to a
           | Claude subscription.
        
             | am17an wrote:
             | You get CC when you sign up for their $20 plan also.
        
               | vl wrote:
               | Without Opus (larger model), for $20 you get only Sonnet.
               | $100 and $200 plans have Opus.
        
               | bigfudge wrote:
               | 100$ gets you very little opus
        
               | Aeolun wrote:
               | True, but if the limits are anything like Opus on the
               | $100 plan you won't get much use out of it :)
        
           | nxobject wrote:
           | To be frank? I can't justify paying for a single-purpose LLM
           | service subscription: Cursor has have a 1-year free
           | educational plan, and for general-purpose multimodal
           | reasoning model work (e.g. OCR, general knowledge reference,
           | math computations, prose processing), I already have a
           | ChatGPT Plus subscription. It's the streaming service dilemma
           | all over again.
        
           | shmoogy wrote:
           | I was using it for o3 when sonnet is unable to successfully
           | implement something - but I use ZenMCP now.
           | 
           | I still feel like I can review diffs more efficiently in an
           | ide, but I'm pretty much just mosh-ing into my server and
           | have a few tmux windows going and feel I'm starting to get a
           | bit more efficient.
           | 
           | Still considering the Claude max 20x plan to just use opus
           | 100% of the time though
        
           | nikcub wrote:
           | Cursor has the best tab completion model. I use it together
           | with Claude Code.
           | 
           | $20 Cursor Pro plan and $200 MAX Claude Code plan really is a
           | great great pairing.
        
       | artursapek wrote:
       | adding a hook to have it push to prod every time baby
        
         | apwell23 wrote:
         | you can just tell it do that or in your claude.md. don't need
         | hooks
        
           | thelittleone wrote:
           | In some cases cc misses rules in CLAUDE.md.
        
             | ramoz wrote:
             | In many cases.
        
               | apwell23 wrote:
               | so its back to hand coding stuff again.
               | 
               | They are going to slowly add "features" that brings
               | handcoding back till its like 100% handcoding again.
        
               | ramoz wrote:
               | This doesn't come without consideration. You can see I
               | mention this in the original feature request.
               | 
               | Yes - it's fine to think of it as handholding (or
               | handcoding). These model providers cannot be responsible
               | for ultimate alignment with their users. Today, they can
               | at best enable integration so a user, or business, can
               | express and ensure their own alignment at runtime.
               | 
               | The nature of these systems already requires human
               | symbiosis. This is nothing more than a new integration
               | point. Will empower agents beyond today's capabilities,
               | increase adoption.
        
         | thelittleone wrote:
         | This also:
         | 
         | 1) Assign coding task via prompt 2) Hook: Write test for prompt
         | proves 3) Write code 4) Hook: Test code 5) Code passes ->
         | Commit 6) Else go to 3.
        
         | bgwalter wrote:
         | We have to do this, otherwise China wins the "AI" race!
        
       | nojs wrote:
       | Exit Code 2 Behavior         PreToolUse - Blocks the tool call,
       | shows error to Claude
       | 
       | This is great, it means you can set up complex concrete rules
       | about commands CC is allowed to run (and with what arguments),
       | rather than trying to coax these via CLAUDE.md.
       | 
       | E.g. you can allow                   docker compose exec django
       | python manage.py test
       | 
       | but prevent                   docker compose exec django python
       | manage.py makemigrations
        
         | rco8786 wrote:
         | You can already do this in .Claude/settings.json
        
           | nojs wrote:
           | Ah you're right, but for more complex logic it's useful to be
           | able to run it through a custom script
        
           | paulhodge wrote:
           | That's limited to simple string matching with `*` so it can't
           | handle anything complex.
        
       | brynary wrote:
       | This closes a big feature gap. One thing that may not be obvious
       | is that because of the way Claude Code generates commits, regular
       | Git hooks won't work. (At least, in most configurations.)
       | 
       | We've been using CLAUDE.md instructions to tell Claude to auto-
       | format code with the Qlty CLI (https://github.com/qltysh/qlty)
       | but Claude a bit hit and miss in following them. The determinism
       | here is a win.
       | 
       | It looks like the events that can be hooked are somewhat limited
       | to start, and I wonder if they will make it easy to hook Git
       | commit and Git push.
        
         | alfons_foobar wrote:
         | Why is it that regular git hooks do not work with claude code?
        
           | brynary wrote:
           | When using Claude Code cloud, in order to create signed
           | commits, Claude uses the GitHub API to create commits instead
           | of the git CLI
        
             | ramoz wrote:
             | Wdym Claude Code cloud? Like in a cloud env?
        
             | alfons_foobar wrote:
             | Huh, I had not heard of claude code cloud before.
             | 
             | (Also almost swallowed my tongue saying that out loud)
        
         | BonoboIO wrote:
         | Husky and lint-staged worked for me. Pre Commit Hooks did not
         | work for me.
        
         | symbolicAGI wrote:
         | FYI.
         | 
         | Claude loves Java.
         | 
         | I never have to reformat. It picks up my indentation
         | preferences immediately and obeys my style guide flawlessly.
         | When I ask it to perfect my JavaDoc it is awesome.
         | 
         | Must be a ton of fabulous enterprise Java in the training set.
        
           | Implicated wrote:
           | This is pretty much my experience with PHP/Laravel (on modern
           | versions, 11/12, on legacy projects it has a hard time
           | "remembering" it needs to use different syntax/methods to do
           | things)
        
       | bionhoward wrote:
       | Given the Anthropic legal terms forbid competing with them, what
       | are we actually allowed to do with this? Seems confusing what is
       | allowed.
       | 
       | No machine learning work? That would compete.
       | 
       | No writing stuff I would train AI on. Except I own the stuff it
       | writes, but I can't use it.
       | 
       | Can we build websites with it? What websites don't compete with
       | Anthropic?
       | 
       | Terminal games? No, Claude code is a terminal game, if you make a
       | terminal game it competes with Claude?
       | 
       | Can their "trust and safety team" humans read everyone's stuff
       | just to check if we're competing with LLMs (funny joke) and steal
       | business ideas and use them at Anthropic?
       | 
       | Feels like the dirty secret of AI services is, every possible use
       | case violates the terms, and we just have to accept we're using
       | something their legal team told us not to use? How is that
       | logically consistent? Any safety concerns? This doesn't seem like
       | a law Asimov would appreciate.
       | 
       | It would be cool if the set of allowed use cases wasn't empty.
       | That might make Anthropic seem more _intelligent_
        
         | nerdsniper wrote:
         | Would you argue that Cursor (valued at $10B) is breaking
         | Anthropic's terms by making an IDE that competes with their
         | Canvas feature?
        
           | jazzyjackson wrote:
           | Is Cursor using Claude code to build? Or they just allow it
           | to plug into Claude?
        
           | moralestapia wrote:
           | Yes.
        
           | varenc wrote:
           | Cursor isn't building models trained with the outputs of
           | Anthropic models (I think). That's what the ToS is
           | forbidding.
        
             | bionhoward wrote:
             | That's what everyone acts like the ToS forbids, but the
             | language of the ToS as written is much more (infinitely)
             | broad
        
         | jazzyjackson wrote:
         | Oh come on, your CRUD app is not competing with an LLMaaS
        
           | moralestapia wrote:
           | Oh come on, understand how contracts work before posting a
           | comment like this one.
        
         | paulsutter wrote:
         | You're only competing with them if you're doing something they
         | consider competitive. OpenAI is competitive, you are not
        
         | ethan_smith wrote:
         | Anthropic's terms typically restrict training competing AI
         | models with their outputs, not building standard applications
         | or websites that simply use their API as a tool.
        
           | _flux wrote:
           | The TOS says (https://www.anthropic.com/legal/consumer-
           | terms):
           | 
           | You may not access or use, or help another person to access
           | or use, our Services in the following ways:
           | 
           | 2. To develop any products or services that compete with our
           | Services, including to develop or train any artificial
           | intelligence or machine learning algorithms or models or
           | resell the Services.
           | 
           | Let's say you've used Anthropic's model to generate open
           | source software and then some 3rd party trains their model on
           | that. Have you now helped another person to use their service
           | in a way that violates the terms?
           | 
           | I suppose that's pretty far-fetched, though, unless you have
           | some interaction with the party doing the training. Sometimes
           | you might, though: perhaps some company provides services to
           | train a model on exactly your code base, and then provide
           | similar service as Anthropic does for your code base, thus
           | being in direct competition of Antropic as well.
        
           | bionhoward wrote:
           | it reads, "competing products or services" -- not "training
           | competing AI models" with their outputs
           | 
           | Also, who the fuck wants a codebase they can't train models
           | on
        
       | parhamn wrote:
       | This needs a way to match directories for changes in monorepos.
       | E.g. run this linter only if there were changes in this
       | directory.
        
         | ramoz wrote:
         | An abstraction via a script should work, right? They document
         | that it pipes the JSON data to your command's stdin,
         | ```lint-monorepo.sh            # read that data
         | json_input=$(cat)            # do some parsing here with jq,
         | get the file path (file_path)            if [$file_path" ==
         | "$dir1"*]         run lint_for_dir1       ```
        
         | brynary wrote:
         | This can be implemented at the line level if the linter is Git
         | aware
        
         | dcre wrote:
         | Whatever you run in the hook can check whatever conditions you
         | want.
        
         | tinodb wrote:
         | Set up pre-commit and call that from a hook? That's what we
         | have
        
       | carraes wrote:
       | So, form my limited understanding, this doesn't take up context,
       | it's something auto where you can configure per tool use, and not
       | MCP that Claude decides "when" to run it?!
        
       | AdieuToLogic wrote:
       | So many people yearn for LLM's to be like the Star Trek ship
       | computer, which when asked a question unconditionally provides a
       | response relevant and correct, needing no verification.
       | 
       | A better analogy is LLM's are closer to the "universal
       | translator" with an occasional interaction similar to[0]:
       | Black Knight: None shall pass.       King Arthur: What?
       | Black Knight: None shall pass!       King Arthur: I have no
       | quarrel with you good Sir Knight, But I must cross this bridge.
       | Black Knight: Then you shall die.       King Arthur: I command
       | you, as King of the Britons, to stand aside!       Black Knight:
       | I move for no man.       King Arthur: So be it!       [they fight
       | until Arthur cuts off the Black Knight's left arm]       King
       | Arthur: Now, stand aside, worthy adversary.       Black Knight:
       | 'Tis but a scratch.       King Arthur: A scratch? Your arm's off!
       | Black Knight: No, it isn't.       King Arthur: Well, what's that
       | then?       Black Knight: I've had worse.
       | 
       | 0 -
       | https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Monty_Python_and_the_Holy_Grai...
        
       | bearjaws wrote:
       | Claude Code has basically grown to dominate my initial coding
       | workflow.
       | 
       | I was using the API and passed $50 easily, so I upgraded to the
       | $100 a month plan and have already reached $100 in usage.
       | 
       | I've been working on a large project, with 3 different repos
       | (frontend, backend, legacy backend) and I just have all 3 of them
       | in one directory now with claude code.
       | 
       | Wrote some quick instructions about how it was setup, its worked
       | very well. If I am feeling brave I can have multiple claude codes
       | running in different terminals, each working on one piece, but
       | Opus tends to do better working across all 3 repos with all of
       | the required context.
       | 
       | Still have to audit every change, commit often, but it works
       | great 90% of the time.
       | 
       | Opus-4 feels like what OAI was trying to hype up for the better
       | part of 6 months before releasing 4.5
        
         | wahnfrieden wrote:
         | You can't use it across three repos like a workspace in Xcode?
        
           | nikita2206 wrote:
           | It is all file based, so yes you can if you do what OP said:
           | `git clone repo-one && git clone repo-two` and tell claude
           | that repo-one directory is for example frontend, repo-two is
           | backend (or better name the directories after what they are)
        
             | bearjaws wrote:
             | Exactly this, nothing fancy really.
        
           | booli wrote:
           | You can use git work tree for that. There is a very extensive
           | blog here:
           | 
           | https://www.pulsemcp.com/posts/how-to-use-claude-code-to-
           | wie...
        
       | rtp4me wrote:
       | Just started using Claude (very late to the game), and I am truly
       | blown away. Instead of struggling for hours trying to get the
       | right syntax for a Powershell script or to convert Python to Go,
       | I simply ask Claude to make it happen. This helps me focus on
       | content creation instead of the mind-bending experience of syntax
       | across various languages. While some might call it laziness, I
       | call it freedom as it helps me get my stuff done quicker.
       | 
       | I have been using it for other stuff (real estate, grilling
       | recipes, troubleshooting electrical issues with my truck), and it
       | seems to have a very large knowledge base. At this point, my goal
       | is to get good at asking the right kinds of questions to get the
       | best/most accurate answers.
        
         | dmix wrote:
         | That's great. Regardless of the naysayers about AI hype in
         | tech, it was a major development for general society even if
         | this is all it ends up being.
        
           | billbrown wrote:
           | It remains to be seen whether it's a net value once the VC
           | firehose dries up and the true costs are revealed. It's quite
           | possible that the profitable price is not worth it for most
           | companies.
        
             | KoolKat23 wrote:
             | It can still be a lot more expensive and be cheaper than a
             | human, it might mean less chance taking and spending the
             | money to try set it up and see if it works though. More
             | existing setups, less new setups.
        
             | paulhodge wrote:
             | I'm pretty sure that the $100 / $200 plans are a net profit
             | for Anthropic. Most users (including myself) don't come
             | close to the usage limit.
             | 
             | I've been trying to max out the $100 plan and I have a
             | problem where I run out of stuff to ask it to do. Even when
             | I try to have multiple side projects at once, Claude just
             | gets stuff done, and then sits idle.
        
           | rtp4me wrote:
           | I have been using Claude to iterate through some complex
           | Powershell code to convert Azure VMs from Intel to AMD SKUs,
           | and I simply can't believe how good it is. I am definitely
           | NOT an Azure or Powershell expert by any means, but the power
           | and ease of idea iteration is truly a game changer (I have
           | been in IT since about '91). Yes, Claude makes some mistakes
           | - typically with certain command arguments, but I am able to
           | lean on my experience to work through those issues.
           | 
           | What would have taken me a week to get up-to-speed with
           | Powershell and all the Azure powershell commands/syntax has
           | now taken me about 4hrs.
        
       | jonstewart wrote:
       | I've been playing with Claude Code the past few days. It is very
       | energetic and maybe will help me get over the hump on some long-
       | standing difficult problems, but it loses focus quickly. Despite
       | explicit directions in CLAUDE.md to build with "make -j8" and run
       | unit tests with "make -j8 check", I see it sometimes running make
       | without -j or calling the test executable directly. I would like
       | to limit it to doing certain essential aspects of workflow with
       | the commands I specify, just as a developer would normally do.
       | Are "Hooks" the right answer?
        
         | bfLives wrote:
         | For the `-j` issue specifically, exporting `MAKEFLAGS=-j8`
         | should work.
        
           | wahnfrieden wrote:
           | or mcp
        
           | kaoD wrote:
           | Thanks, I'll let Claude know.
        
         | paulhodge wrote:
         | The AI definitely gets confused when there is a lot of stuff
         | happening. It helps if you try to make the commands as easy as
         | possible. Like, change 'make' so that '-j8' is default, or add
         | scripts like make-check.sh that does 'make -j check', or add an
         | MCP server that has commands for the most common actions (tell
         | the AI to write an MCP server for you).
         | 
         | Hooks would probably help, I think you could add a hook to
         | auto-reject the bot when it calls the wrong thing.
        
       | cheriot wrote:
       | Amazing how there's whole companies dedicated to this and yet
       | claude code keeps leading the way.
        
         | wippler wrote:
         | Not to take away anything here, but hooks are present in other
         | similar products. Atleast one example here -
         | https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazonq/latest/qdeveloper-ug/com...
        
         | stavros wrote:
         | Does it? Claude Code is the product that works the least well
         | for me, mainly because of its tendency to go off and do tons of
         | stuff. I've found LLMs are at their best when they produce few
         | enough lines of code that I can review and iterate, not when
         | they go off and invent the world.
         | 
         | For that reason, I mainly use Aider and Cursor (the latter
         | mostly in the "give me five lines" comment mode).
        
           | danielbln wrote:
           | I tell Claude Code to make a detailed implementation plan,
           | then come back to me for discussion, then we step through the
           | plan bit by bit together. It's all about guidelines. Don't
           | want it to charge ahead? Tell it not to.
        
       | mkagenius wrote:
       | As an aside, people say AI will eliminate coding jobs, but then
       | who will configure these hooks? Or think about adding such a
       | feature?
       | 
       | These kinds of tooling and related work will still be there
       | unless AI evolves to the point that it even thinks of this and
       | announces this to all other AI entities and they also implement
       | it properly etc.
        
         | mrmincent wrote:
         | To misuse a woodworking metaphor, I think we're experiencing a
         | shift from hand tools to power tools.
         | 
         | You still need someone who understands the basics to get the
         | good results out of the tools, but they're not chiseling fine
         | furniture by hand anymore, they're throwing heaps of wood
         | through the tablesaw instead. More productive, but more likely
         | to lose a finger if you're not careful.
        
           | forgotoldacc wrote:
           | And we may get an ugly transitory period where a lot of
           | programs go from being clearly hand made with some degree of
           | care and some fine details that show the developer's
           | craftsmanship, to awful prefab and brutalist software that
           | feels inhuman, mass-produced, and nothing is really fit for
           | the job but still shipped because it kind of works well
           | enough.
           | 
           | People go to museums to admire old hand-carved furniture and
           | travel to cities to admire the architecture of centuries past
           | made with hand-chiseled blocks. While power tools do let
           | people make things of equal quality faster, they're instead
           | generally used to make things of worse quality much, much
           | faster and the field has gone from being a craft to simply
           | being an assembly line job. As bad as software is today,
           | we're likely to hit even deeper lows and people will miss the
           | days where Electron apps are good compared to what's yet to
           | come.
           | 
           | There's already been one step in this direction with the
           | Cambrian extinction of 90s/early 2000s software. People still
           | talk about how soulful Winamp/old Windows Media
           | Player/ZSNES/etc were.
        
             | torginus wrote:
             | I kinda feel differently - it's more like how nowadays you
             | have access to high-quality power tools at cheap prices,
             | and tons of tutorials on Youtube that teach you how to do
             | woodworking, and even if you can't afford the masterwork
             | furniture made by craftsmen, you don't have to buy the
             | shitty mass produced stuff - sure yours won't be as good,
             | but it will be made to your spec.
             | 
             | Moving on into a concrete software example, thanks to AI
             | productivity, we replaced a lot of expensive and crappy
             | subscription SaaS software with our homegrown stuff. Our
             | stuff is probably 100x simpler (everyone knows the pain of
             | making box software for a diverse set of customer needs,
             | everything needs to be configurable, which leads to crazy
             | convoluted code, and a lot of it). It's also much better
             | and cheaper to run, to say nothing of the money we save by
             | not paying the exorbitant subscription fee.
             | 
             | I suspect the biggest losers of the AI revolution will be
             | the SaaS companies whose value proposition was: Yes you can
             | use open source for this, but the extra cost of an engineer
             | who maintains this is more than we charge.
             | 
             | As for bespoke software, 'slop' software using Electron, or
             | Unity in video games exists because people believe in the
             | convenience of using these huge lumbering monoliths that
             | come with a ton of baggage, while they were taught the
             | creed that coding to the metal is too hard.
             | 
             | LLMs can help with that, and show people that they can do
             | bespoke from scratch (and more importantly teach people how
             | to do that). Claude/o3/whatever can probably help you build
             | a game in WebGL you thought you needed a game engine for.
        
               | forgotoldacc wrote:
               | Hence the transitory period.
               | 
               | We went through decades of absolutely hideous slop, and
               | now people are yearning for the past and learning how to
               | make things that are aesthetically appealing, like the
               | things that used to be common.
               | 
               | I think we're looking at at least a decade of absolute
               | garbage coming up because it's cheap to make, and people
               | like things that are cheap in the short term. Then people
               | will look back at when software was "good", and use new
               | tools to make things that were as good as they were
               | before.
               | 
               | And not limited to AI and power tools, it happened with
               | art as well. Great art was made with oil paints,
               | watercolors, and brushes. Then digital painting and
               | Photoshop came around and we had a long period of
               | absolute messes on DeviantArt and a lot of knowledge of
               | good color usage and blending was basically lost, but art
               | was produced much faster. Now digital artists are
               | learning traditional methods and combining it with modern
               | technology to make digital art that can be produced
               | faster than traditional art, but with quality that's just
               | as good.
               | 
               | 2005 digital paintings have a distinct, and even in the
               | hands of great artists, very sloppy and amateurish feel.
               | Meanwhile 2020s digital artists easily rival the greats
               | of decades and centuries past.
        
               | danielbln wrote:
               | Don't talk about AI with those digital artists though,
               | they will slaughter you for it. The discourse on GenAI in
               | the digital art world (and gaming world, for that matter)
               | has reached an absolutely deranged fever pitch that far
               | outpaces the original valid points about copyright,
               | compensation and intent that were there before. Now it's
               | just screeching.
        
             | konart wrote:
             | >nothing is really fit for the job but still shipped
             | because it kind of works well enough.
             | 
             | This is true for most of the software these days (except
             | for professional software like Photoshop and the like)
             | without LLMs.
        
               | trainerxr50 wrote:
               | Exactly. As a non-software engineer, people talk about
               | software as some fine art on here while my experience as
               | a user is that most software basically sucks in one way
               | or another.
        
               | rustyboy wrote:
               | Amen - As a SWE and i've come to realize that no one pays
               | for me to treat code as craftman quality so I don't. The
               | whole agile mindset is get something out that
               | demonstrates value and fix it things while you go. And in
               | ten years i've also realized that my ability to sit down
               | and make something really special the first time through
               | is - shit. This is the first time i've been able to meet
               | timelines while still producing a better product.
        
             | rolisz wrote:
             | I think it's going to go the opposite way: we'll get a lot
             | more custom made software, that fits exactly what a small
             | customer needs. The code might be utter crap, the design
             | might not be award winning, but it will be custom made to a
             | degree that you can't customize your average Savas.
        
               | bluefirebrand wrote:
               | This was the promise of "no code" / "low code" solutions
               | in the past
               | 
               | It has never worked in the past, I'm not entirely
               | convinced that it will work now
        
               | himeexcelanta wrote:
               | Agreed. Trying to live in a high level of abstraction
               | without understanding the components of the system will
               | cause the project to fail after a certain point.
        
               | voiper1 wrote:
               | But "utter crap" isn't just an aesthetic issue - that can
               | mean all kinds of bugs and malfunctions!
        
               | isoprophlex wrote:
               | And infinite job security for those who know how to turn
               | on a debugger
        
               | txs wrote:
               | Or people will just throw the product away and buy a
               | replacement because it's cheaper than fixing it, much
               | like we no longer mend clothes
        
               | pseudosavant wrote:
               | I think the kind of people, who in the past constructed
               | extremely useful (if brittle) solutions with Excel, will
               | be creating all sorts of AI bespoke and very useful
               | tools.
               | 
               | It won't bother them at all what the code looks like
               | under the hood. Not that the code will look worse that
               | what an "average" developer produces. Claude and ChatGPT
               | both write better code than most of the existing code I
               | usually look at.
        
           | floriferous wrote:
           | Great metaphor, exactly how it feels to me too!
        
           | conception wrote:
           | Feels more like photography. Everyone will "soon" have a tool
           | that lets you take pretty great photos - surpassing
           | professional of thirty years ago.
           | 
           | If you want professional work done you'll still hire someone
           | but that person will also use a lot of professional grade
           | computer tooling with it.
           | 
           | But there definitely won't be as many jobs as before -
           | especially on the low skill end.
        
           | otterley wrote:
           | When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like your
           | thumb.
        
         | energy123 wrote:
         | If programmers become 10x more productive but demand only grows
         | by 5x, what will happen?
        
           | falcor84 wrote:
           | Obviously there will still be as many programmers, each
           | working 2.5 days a week. </wishful-thinking>
        
             | bluefirebrand wrote:
             | And surely each programmer will still earn just as much
             | income but only work half as much
        
           | Quarrelsome wrote:
           | in my experience software demand never slows, its just priced
           | out. Remember a decade ago we were developing a lot slower
           | due to hardware constraints and other things, now we develop
           | much faster but the features we develop are more complex and
           | there are more of them.
           | 
           | I'm not convinced there is a limiter on software demand as it
           | seems to grow alongside development speed. We all have huge
           | backlogs in any non-trivial system.
        
         | wastewastewaste wrote:
         | Yea man, people say combine harvesters will eliminate
         | agriculture jobs, but then who will operate these combine
         | harvesters? Obviously every single manual farm laborer will
         | just switch to being an operator of those.
         | 
         | God, will we never move this discussion past this worthless
         | argument? What value would there be in any of these
         | automatization tools, be in in agriculture or AI, if it just
         | made every single worker switch to being an [automatization
         | tool] operator?
        
           | ath92 wrote:
           | Barring population growth, there is essentially fixed demand
           | for agriculture. For software we don't know what the market
           | will look like once everything about making it gets
           | automated. Either we will churn out the same amount of
           | software with fewer people, or the same amount of people will
           | churn out larger amounts of software. Or maybe there will be
           | even more people working on creating enormous amounts of
           | software. I'd say the likely answer is somewhere between the
           | first and second option, but time will tell.
        
             | yes_man wrote:
             | If software becomes cheaper to make it's not like every IT
             | company in the world is running a cartel where they agree
             | to just cut costs and leave the output the same. Someone
             | will come and smash the competition with more or better
             | features and the ones who didn't invest into development
             | will face pressure to acquire more talent again.
             | 
             | There really isn't a diminishing return on executing great
             | ideas. Almost all software projects have an essentially
             | endless backlog of items that could be done. So I think it
             | will be between 2. and 3. with people who really understand
             | how software is built being even more in demand than ever
             | since they act as multipliers in making sure the increased
             | output is evolvable and maintainable.
        
           | pjmlp wrote:
           | Only a few lucky ones will get the operator jobs, everyone
           | else will queue at the job center.
        
             | danielbln wrote:
             | Save people, not jobs. Alas, the powers that be prevent
             | that.
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | As seen in many countries, people without jobs don't have
               | much of to live from, unless they are lucky ones living
               | at the beach profiting from shares, driven by endless
               | exponential growth demands.
        
         | jonathanstrange wrote:
         | > _unless AI evolves to the point that it even thinks of this_
         | 
         | The #1 goal of every AI company is to create an AI that is
         | capable of programming and improving itself to create the next,
         | more powerful AI. Of course, these kind of configuration jobs
         | will be outsourced to AI as soon as possible, too.
        
         | falcor84 wrote:
         | Like in the story about cosmologist and the old lady, you seem
         | to be asking "What is the AI standing on?", and the reply here
         | is of course "You're very clever, young man, very clever, but
         | it's AIs all the way down!"
         | 
         | Many already let Claude Code update its own CLAUDE.md, so I
         | don't see any reason why you couldn't (dangerously-skipping-
         | permissions) let it edit its own hooks. And as in Jurassic
         | Park, the question of whether we should seems to be left by the
         | wayside.
        
         | nikita2206 wrote:
         | You can already ask Claude Code to modify its own settings
        
         | yoavm wrote:
         | I generally agree that "we" will still be needed, but OTOH, who
         | needs prettier if no human is ever going to read the code?
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | Except that for most people this is not coding, is
         | administration work, DevOps kind of stuff.
         | 
         | I already do lots of "coding" in SaaS products, that have very
         | little to do with what most HNers think of proper coding.
        
         | paulddraper wrote:
         | > people say AI will eliminate coding jobs
         | 
         | Yes.
         | 
         | > then who will configure these hooks?
         | 
         | It will also create jobs.
         | 
         | > unless AI evolves to the point that it even thinks of this
         | and announces this to all other AI entities and they also
         | implement it properly
         | 
         | Also yes.
         | 
         | ---
         | 
         | People think that technology is some sort of binary less
         | jobs/more jobs thing.
         | 
         | Technology eliminates some jobs and creates others.
        
       | aantix wrote:
       | Wish it supported rollbacks..
        
         | robbomacrae wrote:
         | With this you could add support yourself!
         | 
         | Add a PostToolUse [0] hook that automatically creates a git
         | commit whenever changes are made. Then you can either git
         | checkout the commit you want to rollback to... Or you could
         | assign those git commits an index and make a little MCP server
         | that allows you to /rollback:goto 3 or /rollback:back 2 or
         | whichever syntax you want to support.
         | 
         | In fact if you put that paragraph into Claude I wouldn't be
         | surprised if it made it for you.
         | 
         | [0] https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-
         | code/hooks#posttoo...
        
       | b0a04gl wrote:
       | >before this you had to trust that claude would follow your
       | readme instructions about running linters or tests. hit and miss
       | at best. now its deterministic. pre hook blocks bad actions post
       | hook validates results.
       | 
       | >hooks let you build workflows where multiple agents can hand off
       | work safely. one agent writes code another reviews it another
       | deploys it. each step gated by verification hooks.
        
         | icoder wrote:
         | This nicely describes where we're at with LLM's as I see it:
         | they are 'fancy' enough to be able to write code yet at the
         | same time they can't be trusted to do stuff which can be solved
         | with a simple hook.
         | 
         | I feel that currently improvement mostly comes from slapping
         | what to me feels like workarounds on top of something that very
         | well may be a local maximum.
        
           | Marazan wrote:
           | Someone described LLMs in the coding space as stone soup. So
           | much stuff is being created around then to make them work
           | better that at some point it feels like you'll be able to
           | remove the LLM part of the equation
        
             | samrus wrote:
             | We cant deny the LLM has utility. You cant eat the stone
             | but the LLM can implement design patterns for example.
             | 
             | I think this insistance on near autonomous agents is
             | setting the bar too high, which wouldnt be an issue if
             | these companies werent then insisting that the bar is set
             | just right.
             | 
             | These things understand language perfectly, theyve solved
             | NLP because thats what they model extremely well. But
             | agentic stuff is modelled by reinforcement learning and
             | until thats in the foundation model itself (at the token
             | prediction level) these things have no real understanding
             | of state spaces being a recursive function of action spaces
             | and such stuff. And they cant autonomously code or drive or
             | manage a fund until they do
        
           | ramoz wrote:
           | Claude Code is an agent, not an LLM. Literally this is
           | software that was released 4mo ago. lol.
           | 
           | 1y ago - No provider was training LLMs in an environment
           | modeled for agentic behavior - ie in conjunction with
           | software design of an integrated utility.
           | 
           | 'slapped on workaround' is a very lazy way to describe this
           | innovation.
        
             | koakuma-chan wrote:
             | > Literally this is software that was released 4mo ago.
             | 
             | Feels like ages
        
               | ryandvm wrote:
               | That's what a singularity feels like.
        
           | oefrha wrote:
           | > they are 'fancy' enough to be able to write code yet at the
           | same time they can't be trusted to do stuff which can be
           | solved with a simple hook.
           | 
           | Humans are fancy enough to be able to write code yet at the
           | same time they can't be trusted to do stuff which can be
           | solved with a simple hook, like a simple formatter or linter.
           | That's why we still run those on CI. This is a meaningless
           | statement.
        
             | RobertDeNiro wrote:
             | One is a machine the other one is not. People have to stop
             | comparing LLMs to humans. Would you hold a car to human
             | standards?
        
               | oefrha wrote:
               | The machine just needs to be coded to run stuff (as shown
               | in this very post). My coworkers can't be coded to follow
               | procedures and still submit PRs failing basic checks,
               | sadly.
        
               | zhivota wrote:
               | A self driving car, yes.
        
           | iagooar wrote:
           | Humans use tools, so does AI. Does us make any less valuable
           | as humans because we use bicycles and hammers? Why would it
           | be bad for an AI to use tools?
        
         | gwbas1c wrote:
         | I wonder how hard it is to create an alternate user account and
         | have Claude run as that user instead?
        
           | symbolicAGI wrote:
           | A NYC bank has given its coding agents email addresses.
        
       | theusus wrote:
       | I was yesterday only searching for ways to live lint than waiting
       | for Claude to do that or during pre-commit
        
       | ainiriand wrote:
       | I tried to make an app in claude code like they so much fanfare
       | it could do, and it failed. It was obvious it will fail, I wanted
       | something that I think it was not done before, using the Youtube
       | api. But it failed nonetheless.
       | 
       | I am tired of pretending that this can actually pull any
       | meaningful work besides a debug companion or a slightly enhanced
       | google/stackoverflow.
        
         | bognition wrote:
         | Interesting how long ago did you do this? How long did you
         | spend on it?
         | 
         | I was skeptical about Claude code and then I spent a week
         | really learning how to use it. Within the week I had built a
         | backend with FastAPI that supported user creation, password
         | reset, email confirmation, a front end, and support for ouath
         | into a few systems.
         | 
         | It definitely took me some time to learn how to make it work,
         | but I'm astounded at how much work I got done and for so little
         | typing.
        
           | ainiriand wrote:
           | Yesterday!
        
           | dakiol wrote:
           | How do you know the code is solid? If your bar is "if it
           | runs, then it is good", then alright, otherwise you (or
           | someone else) need to review that code. So, Yeah llms are
           | nice but i don't think we can just go and deploy whatever
           | they throw at us.
        
             | timschmidt wrote:
             | Do you allow interns to push to prod? Because I don't. The
             | LLM is treated no differently. It's an extraordinarily
             | fast, extraordinarily well read intern. You can ask it to
             | do anything, it might succeed, anything it produces should
             | be reviewed fully. I already interact with interns and open
             | source project contributors in a similar fashion, so the
             | LLM plugs right in.
        
         | solumunus wrote:
         | If you can't build something without Claude you will probably
         | fail to build it with Claude.
        
         | lukan wrote:
         | "I wanted something that I think it was not done before"
         | 
         | But you do know, that this is what LLMs ain't good at.
         | 
         | So your conclusion is somewhat off, because there are plenty of
         | programming work of things that were done before and require
         | just tweaking.
         | 
         | I mean, I am also not hooked yet and just occasionally use
         | chatGPT/claude for concrete stuff, but I do find it useful and
         | I do see, where it can get really useful for me (once it really
         | knows my codebase and the libaries used and does not jump
         | between incompatible API versions)
        
           | ainiriand wrote:
           | Yes that is a very accurate assessment, I use Claude almost
           | all the time for other tasks, but when it was a moment to
           | really put it to the test I was not able to produce anything
           | at least usable.
           | 
           | My request involved a local web application that acted as a
           | server for other clients in the same network using Rust.
           | 
           | I wanted to use websockets, it never worked and I was never
           | able to nudge it in any meaningful direction, it started to
           | make circular edits on the codebase and it just never worked.
        
         | samrus wrote:
         | Its definitely not there yet. You have to babysit it alot. Its
         | not autonomous.
         | 
         | The utility i find is that it helps _me_ do the real
         | engineering work, the planning and solution architechting, and
         | then can bang out code once it has rock solid instructions (in
         | natural language but honestly one level above psuedocode) and
         | then i have to review it with absolutely zero faith in its
         | ability to do things. Then it can work well.
         | 
         | But its not where these guys are claiming it is
        
           | ramoz wrote:
           | But you know just how powerful that middle bit is.
           | 
           | An engineer will truly 10x with these, maybe greater. So will
           | the unskilled but they will have diminishing returns over
           | more usage.
        
           | svara wrote:
           | Exactly. My hunch is that those who try to find reasons why
           | AI coding bad are either
           | 
           | * afraid that the demands on them in their job will increase
           | * actually like and are attached to the act of writing out
           | code.
           | 
           | Frankly I can sometimes empathize with both but their
           | conclusions are still wrong.
        
         | ramoz wrote:
         | If you do not know the software design, claude code will fail.
         | If you know the software design, you can guide it toward
         | success.
        
           | causal wrote:
           | I see this a lot on HN: approach AI hoping it will fail and
           | declaring it useless when minimal effort produces bad
           | results.
        
         | svara wrote:
         | I build things that haven't been done before with Cursor all
         | the time. You have to break it down into simple building blocks
         | rather than specifying everything up front.
         | 
         | If you do it right this actually forces good design.
        
         | stpedgwdgfhgdd wrote:
         | Use TDD so CC can converge. I see people tuning a prompt, that
         | is fun, not software engineering.
        
         | ryandvm wrote:
         | I have a side project Android app. To test Claude Code, I
         | loaded it up in the repo and asked it to add a subscription
         | billing capability to the app. Not rocket science, but it
         | probably would have taken me a day or two to figure out the
         | mechanics of Google Play subscription billing and implement it
         | in code.
         | 
         | Claude Code did it in 30 seconds and it works flawlessly.
         | 
         | I am so confused how people are not seeing this as a valuable
         | tool. Like, are you asking it to solve P versus NP or
         | something?
         | 
         | If you need to do something that's been done a million times,
         | but you don't have experience with it, LLMs are an excellent
         | way to get running quickly.
        
       | prmph wrote:
       | I frequently have to remind Claude Code of the instructions in
       | the CLAUDE.md file, as well as various general aspects of the
       | code base.
       | 
       | Maybe this will enable a fix
        
         | SV_BubbleTime wrote:
         | > Stop using early returns in void functions! It's in the
         | clause.md you shouldn't do that in this project!
         | 
         | Reading CLAUDE.md (22 seconds, 2.6k tokens..)
         | 
         | You're absolutely right!
        
       | camwest wrote:
       | A couple of example hooks: https://cameronwestland.com/building-
       | my-first-claude-code-ho...
       | 
       | I'm happy to see Claude Code reaching parity with Cursor for
       | linting/type checking after edits.
        
       | Syzygies wrote:
       | .claude/settings.local.json fragment:                 "hooks": {
       | "PostToolUse": [           {             "matcher":
       | "Edit|MultiEdit|Write",             "hooks": [               {
       | "type": "command",                 "command": "jq -r
       | '.tool_input.file_path' | xargs bin/save-hook.sh"               }
       | ]           }         ]       }
       | 
       | I jumped at this HN post, because Claude Code Opus 4 has this
       | stupid habit of never terminating files with a return.
       | 
       | To test a new hook one needs to restart claude. Better to run the
       | actual processing through a script one can continually edit in
       | one session. This script uses formatters on C files and shell
       | scripts, and just fixes missing returns on other files.
       | 
       | As usual claude and other AI is poor at breaking problems into
       | small steps, and makes up ways to do things. The above hook
       | receives a json file, which I first saved to disk, then extracted
       | the file path and saved that to disk, then instead called save-
       | hook.sh on that path. Now we're home after a couple of edits to
       | save-hook.sh
       | 
       | This was all ten minutes. I wasted far more time letting it flail
       | attempting bigger steps at once.
        
       | 6thbit wrote:
       | Find it a bit odd they didn't model this as an MCP server itself,
       | and making hooks just mcp tools with pre-agreed names.
       | 
       | Wouldn't it be nice to have the agent autodiscover the hooks and
       | abstracting their implementation details away under the mcp
       | server, which you could even reuse by other agents?
        
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