A developer’s guide to Claude Code Hooks and workflow automation

AI coding assistants like Anthropic’s Claude are pretty incredible. You can have a conversation with one and watch it draft new features, hunt down bugs, or refactor an entire codebase. It’s a huge productivity boost, turning what used to be hours of work into a simple chat.

But there’s a small problem. Large language models are creative and powerful, but they aren’t always predictable. You can tell an AI to run a linter after every file edit, but you can’t be 100% certain it will remember to do it every single time. So, how do you enforce specific rules and build genuinely reliable, automated workflows with an AI?

The answer is Claude Code Hooks. This feature gives developers something that’s been missing: direct, programmatic control over the AI’s behavior. Instead of just suggesting a workflow, you get to hard-code it.

This guide will break down what Claude Code Hooks are, show you what you can do with them, and explore how the ideas behind them can be used to automate business workflows far beyond just writing code.

So, what are Claude Code Hooks?

Simply put, Claude Code Hooks are shell commands you define that run automatically at specific points in Claude’s process. Think of them as triggers or event listeners for your AI assistant. Instead of hoping a prompt instruction is followed, you’re setting a firm rule that executes a piece of code whenever a particular event happens.

This lets you inject your own logic right into the AI’s operations, bridging the gap between creative AI help and rule-based automation.

You can set up hooks to trigger at several key moments. Here are the main events you can work with:

• PreToolUse: This runs before the AI does something, like editing a file or running a shell command. It’s perfect for validation, checking permissions, or stopping the AI from taking an action you don’t want it to.

• PostToolUse: This runs right after an action is completed successfully. This is your go-to for tasks like auto-formatting code, running tests to check for new bugs, or logging what the AI just did.

• SessionStart / SessionEnd: These hooks fire up at the very beginning or end of a session. They’re great for setting up a clean environment before you start or for running cleanup scripts and generating session reports when you’re done.

• UserPromptSubmit: This triggers the moment you submit a prompt, but before Claude actually processes it. You could use this to add extra context into the prompt or validate your own request.

• Stop: This runs when the main agent has finished its current task. It’s useful for things like sending notifications or creating a final version control commit.

You configure all these hooks in a settings.json file. The best part is that they receive data about the session, like which file was just edited or which tool was used, so your scripts can be dynamic and smart.

Making AI predictable: Practical uses for Claude Code Hooks

This is where hooks get really interesting. It’s one thing to talk about them in theory, but it’s another to see how they turn vague instructions into solid automation. You can make the AI not just a helpful assistant, but a perfectly compliant team member that never forgets the rules. Here are a few powerful ways people are using Claude Code Hooks right now.

Enforce code quality and consistency with Claude Code Hooks

One of the most common uses for hooks is to automatically enforce code quality. By using a PostToolUse hook, you can trigger linters and formatters like Prettier, Black, or Ruff the instant Claude finishes editing a file.

This means every piece of AI-generated code automatically fits your project’s style guide. No more manual cleanup or reminding the AI to fix its formatting. It just works, every time. This is how you get an AI agent that writes code that looks like it came from you.

Automate your testing and validation loop with Claude Code Hooks

Test-driven development is all about a quick feedback loop: write a test, write the code to pass it, then refactor. Hooks can make that loop even faster. You can set up a PostToolUse hook to automatically run your test suite with pytest or rspec whenever a relevant source file or test file changes.

This gives you immediate feedback on whether the AI’s last change broke something. It’s like having a CI pipeline running on your machine, instantly, after every small change. You can catch regressions before they ever have a chance to get committed.

This video demonstrates how to use Claude Code Hooks to automatically run formatters, linters, and build tests for a more efficient workflow.

Create custom guardrails and security checks using Claude Code Hooks

AI agents are powerful, but you probably don’t want them having free rein over your entire system. The PreToolUse hook is the perfect tool for setting up custom safety nets. For example, you can write a simple script that blocks Claude from editing sensitive files like .env or package-lock.json. You could also prevent it from running potentially destructive commands like rm -rf.

This lets you run Claude with fewer manual permission checks (like using the –dangerously-skip-permissions flag) while still keeping your most critical files and operations safe. You get the speed of autonomy without taking unnecessary risks.

Integrate Claude Code Hooks with your development workflow

This is where hooks go from being a neat feature to a core part of your workflow. You can use them to connect Claude with your other development tools, like your version control system.

For instance, the team at GitButler uses a mix of PreToolUse, PostToolUse, and Stop hooks to automatically stage file changes and create new commits. They can even isolate work from different Claude sessions into separate branches automatically. It’s a great example of how hooks can link an AI agent to the rest of your toolchain, creating a smooth, automated process that goes from a natural language prompt all the way to a clean commit history.

Use Case	Hook Event	Example Command	Key Benefit
Auto-Formatting	PostToolUse	npx prettier –write "$file_path"	Ensures consistent code style automatically.
Auto-Testing	PostToolUse	pytest tests/	Catches regressions instantly after a change.
File Protection	PreToolUse	A script that checks file paths for .env.	Prevents accidental edits to critical files.
Custom Notifications	Stop	notify-send ‘Claude is done!’	Get alerts when a long task is finished.
Auto-Committing	Stop	git commit -am "$prompt"	Creates automatic save points for AI work.

The developer-first approach: How Claude Code Hooks work and where they fall short

So, what’s the catch? Well, you have to get your hands dirty with some code. The way you interact with Claude Code Hooks is through the command line, which is what makes them so flexible but also introduces a few limitations.

Setting up hooks means opening up your ~/.claude/settings.json file and writing shell scripts or small programs to handle the logic. Your script gets a JSON object with all the event context piped to it, and it has to parse that data to figure out what to do.

This creates a bit of a learning curve. To use hooks well, you need to be comfortable with the command line, understand how the hook events work, and know how to handle JSON. It’s a system built by developers, for developers.

Pro Tip: For anything more than a one-liner, it’s a good idea to have your hook’s command call an external script. Trying to cram complex logic into an inline shell command inside a JSON file is a recipe for a debugging nightmare. Keeping your logic in a separate .sh or .py file makes it much easier to test and maintain.

This level of customization is incredibly powerful for software development teams who can put engineering time into building these automations. But what about everyone else?

This is where the model hits a wall. You can’t expect a Head of Support or a customer service manager to write Python scripts and configure JSON files just to automate their team’s workflows. This leaves a big gap: developers get powerful, predictable AI automation, but business teams who need that same reliability are left out. They need the same control, just without the code.

Beyond code: Workflow automation for teams that can’t use Claude Code Hooks

The ideas behind Claude Code Hooks, trigger-based actions, custom logic, and deep workflow integration, are exactly what business teams need to reliably automate their own processes. The good news is, you don’t need to be a developer to get that kind of power.

This is where a platform like eesel AI comes in. It’s built to give teams like customer support the same kind of fine-grained control over AI, but through a completely self-serve, no-code interface. It takes the power of a hook-based system and makes it accessible to everyone.

Let’s look at some direct comparisons:

• Instead of writing PreToolUse scripts for validation, you use eesel’s workflow engine. You can build rules to define exactly which support tickets the AI should handle based on their content, the customer’s plan, or other criteria. Anything else gets automatically sent to a human, just like a hook would block an unwanted action.

• Instead of scripting PostToolUse actions like linting, you use eesel’s "AI Actions." These let you set up the AI to tag, route, or close tickets in your helpdesk, or even call an external API to look up order details in Shopify, all configured with simple dropdown menus.

• Instead of manually testing your hooks by running them over and over, eesel AI has a powerful simulation mode. You can test your entire AI setup on thousands of your past tickets in a safe sandbox. This gives you a clear forecast of how your AI will perform and what its resolution rate will be before a customer ever interacts with it.

The benefit is pretty clear: you get the deterministic control of a system like Claude Code Hooks without writing a single line of code. It lets support managers and team leads build, test, and deploy sophisticated AI agents that follow their exact rules, and they can do it in minutes, not months.

Claude Code Hooks and the right tool for the right job

Claude Code Hooks are a huge step forward for developers. They offer the deep, predictable control needed to make AI coding agents more reliable and powerful. They’re a perfect example of how tailored automation can turn a probabilistic tool into a dependable part of an engineering workflow.

But that same level of control is just as important for business teams, even if they need a different way to use it. For teams in customer support, ITSM, or internal knowledge management, the answer isn’t writing more scripts. It’s about having a tool that gives them the power to build and enforce their own rules through an intuitive interface.

That’s where eesel AI comes in. It provides that workflow automation for customer-facing teams, empowering them to design and deploy AI that works exactly how they need it to.

Get started with no-code AI automation

Ready to bring the power of workflow automation to your support team? Sign up for eesel AI and you can build your first AI agent in under 5 minutes. See for yourself how easy it is to automate ticket responses, triage requests, and give your team superpowers, no coding required.