Pattern: Hooks Remain the Only Zero-Context Extension Point — Use the Graduated Cost Ladder Deliberately

okhlopkov.com·medium signal

Recent practitioner write-ups reinforce a concrete context-budgeting rule: Claude Code's extension surfaces have a graduated context cost — hooks (zero, they don't consume context until they fire), skills (low, loaded on demand by a one-line routing description), plugins (medium), and MCP (high). The actionable pattern is to push deterministic verification and gating into hooks across the 12 lifecycle events (PreToolUse approve/deny, PostToolUse checks), reserve skills for on-demand capability, and only pay MCP's cost when you genuinely need live external tools.