Claude Code Hooks Preset Generator

This generator builds one thing: the hooks block for Claude Code's settings.json, not the whole file. Pick which automations you want, answer a couple of quick configuration questions for the ones that need them, and it hands back valid JSON plus a validator readout that flags anything you turned on but didn't finish configuring.

Hooks trip people up in the same two places every time. First, exit codes: a hook that exits 2 blocks the action and hands Claude the stderr message as the reason, but exit 1 blocks nothing at all, which is the single most common mistake in hand-written guards. Every command this generator writes uses exit 2 on purpose. Second, matchers: ten events, including the Stop event this tool's check-before-done hook uses, ignore matchers entirely, so a matcher on one of those is silently discarded rather than doing what it looks like it should. The validator calls that out by name whenever it applies instead of leaving you to find out the hard way.

The file guard is the part I use daily. Pick which paths Claude should never touch without asking - .env files, lockfiles, a secrets/ folder, CI workflow files, or a pattern you type in - and it writes a PreToolUse hook that reads the file path off the JSON payload and blocks the edit if it matches. Turn on both auto-format and auto-fix-lint and the generator merges them into one PostToolUse matcher group with two handlers instead of two separate groups, which is the shape Claude Code's own documentation uses when more than one command should fire on the same event.

"Make Claude prove the checks pass before calling it done" is a Stop hook: it runs your test suite (using whichever package manager you picked) or a command you type yourself, and if that command fails, the hook exits 2 and blocks the turn instead of letting Claude claim victory on broken code. It's the same idea behind the CLAUDE.md generator's "double-check the work" rule, just enforced instead of requested.

This tool only covers hooks. For the rest of settings.json - permissions, environment variables, model selection - the settings.json generator builds the whole file, and the complete hooks guide documents all 29 lifecycle events and five handler types if you want the reasoning behind a specific answer.

I run Claude Code daily and this generator writes the same hook conventions my own settings.json uses. If you want the finished version of the whole idea - a tuned settings.json, a tuned CLAUDE.md, and the full vetted tool stack, installed in one paste - that is what ClockedCode is. The link is at the bottom of this page.

By Neo Zino - builder of ClockedCode