Claude Code Hooks Deep Dive: 15 Production Hooks with Full Source

Most Claude Code hooks tutorials stop at "run a linter before commit." That's fine for a side project. It falls apart when you have agents making real decisions.

These hooks come from a production system that coordinates 5 autonomous AI agents across a Mac and a Hetzner VPS. One of those agents lost $252 of real money before the right hooks existed. Now it can't.

What you get:

15-chapter guide (~4,700 words) with 4 mermaid diagrams and the $252 postmortem sidebar, covering:

Safety hooks:

• damage-control.py, blocks destructive commands in real-time (rm -rf, force push, DROP TABLE). Custom YAML parser, no external dependencies, fires on every tool call
• verify-completion.py, evidence-based task verification. Agents must prove they're done, not just claim it. Default-to-FAIL philosophy

Observability hooks:

• post-tool-tracker.py, logs every tool invocation to SQLite with secrets scrubbing. Your flight recorder
• trading-observer.py, multi-agent financial tracking with risk levels and alerting
• sandbox-observer.py, code execution monitoring with agent correlation

Automation hooks:

• skill-activation.py, progressive skill disclosure based on prompt content (SHA256 config integrity)
• inbox-auto-claim.py, multi-session dispatch with two-phase inbox claiming
• loop-stop-hook.py, prevents accidental exit during iterative loops

Preservation hooks:

• pre-compact.py, backs up critical context before compaction. Secrets scrubbed, FIFO rotation
• webfetch-archive.py, archives web fetches to Obsidian with YAML frontmatter
• session-end.py, forced retrospectives on significant sessions. Blocks exit until learning is captured

Plus:

• Hook composition patterns (chaining, conditional, environment-aware)
• 4 drop-in template hooks (pre-commit gate, cost tracker, notifications, secrets scanner)
• Complete deployment guide with settings.json examples
• patterns.yaml reference (25 dangerous command patterns, 3-tier path protection)
• SQLite schema for the observability stack

Who this is for:

• Developers using Claude Code who want more control over agent behavior
• Teams running autonomous agents that need safety guardrails
• Anyone who's been burned by an agent doing something destructive

Who this is NOT for:

• Complete beginners to Claude Code (start with the free Memory Kit)
• People who only use Claude Code for simple one-off tasks

Inside the package:

• guide.md (15 chapters, ~4,700 words, 4 mermaid diagrams)
• 11 production hooks + 4 customizable templates (15 Python files total, each runnable standalone)
• 7 shared library modules under content/lib/
• 3 config files (patterns.yaml, schema.sql, settings-example.json)
• README with copy-paste install walkthrough and working test commands
• CHANGELOG documenting known limitations and planned v1.1 items

All code is Python 3.10+ with zero external dependencies. That's intentional, security hooks shouldn't depend on pip packages.