Automate Your Game Dev Grind: A Guide to Claude Code Hooks
Z
Zack Saadioui
8/11/2025
Here's the thing about making games: it’s a grind. A beautiful, creative, sometimes soul-crushing grind. Especially if you're an indie developer, you're not just a coder or a designer; you're the writer, the marketer, the QA tester, & often your own harshest critic. The dream of bringing your vision to life is constantly at war with the reality of limited time, resources, & just plain exhaustion. We've all been there, staring at a bug at 2 AM, wondering if we'll ever get to the fun part.
But what if you had a secret weapon? A way to automate the boring stuff, streamline the repetitive tasks, & get back to what you love – actually making the game? That's where AI, & specifically a tool like Claude, comes in. & I'm not just talking about asking it to write a snippet of code here & there. I'm talking about something way more powerful: using Claude Code Hooks to fundamentally change how you work.
Honestly, once you get the hang of hooks, it feels like you've unlocked a cheat code for your entire development workflow. It’s about making your AI assistant not just a passive helper, but an active, automated member of your team. So, let's dive into how you can use these hooks to speed things up & maybe, just maybe, get a little more sleep.
The Indie Dev Grind is REAL
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of hooks, let's just acknowledge the mountain that indie developers have to climb. It’s not just about having a great game idea. The challenges are very real & often feel relentless.
First off, there's the resource problem. Unlike big AAA studios, you're likely working with a shoestring budget, if any budget at all. This means you can't just throw money at problems. You have to be creative, resourceful, & learn to wear a LOT of different hats. One minute you're a programmer wrestling with physics, the next you're an artist trying to make a decent-looking sprite, & after that, you're a sound designer trying to find a non-terrible explosion sound effect. It's a lot.
Then there's the sheer technical complexity. Game development is hard. You're dealing with game engines, programming languages, platform-specific quirks, & a million other things that can go wrong. Keeping up with the latest tools & trends is a full-time job in itself. For many, especially those who are self-taught, this can feel like a massive hurdle.
And let's not forget time. Or the lack of it. When you're juggling a day job, a family, or just, you know, life, every second you spend on your game counts. The pressure to make progress can be immense, leading to burnout, which is a very real and serious problem in the indie scene.
This is the landscape we're working in. It’s a tough environment, but it's also one where smart tools & efficient workflows can make a HUGE difference.
So, What the Heck are Claude Code Hooks?
Alright, so I've hyped them up, but what are they? In the simplest terms, Claude Code Hooks are like programmable tripwires for your AI assistant. They are custom commands that you can set up to automatically run at specific moments during your interaction with Claude.
Think about it like this: instead of telling Claude to edit a file & then remembering to go & run your compiler, you can set up a hook that automatically runs the compiler every single time Claude finishes editing a file. It’s about automating the "next step" that you always have to do anyway.
There are a few key moments, or "events," you can hook into. The main ones are:
PreToolUse: This runs before Claude uses a tool (like editing a file or running a command). This is great for quality control, like running a linter to check for errors before the code is even touched.
PostToolUse: This runs immediately after Claude uses a tool. This is probably the one you'll use most. It's perfect for things like auto-formatting your code, running tests, or updating documentation.
Stop: This runs when Claude has finished its work & is waiting for your next prompt. You could use this to send yourself a notification that a long task is done, or to kick off a final build process.
Notification: This hook fires when Claude needs your attention, like asking for permission to do something.
You set these up in a simple settings file, & suddenly, your workflow has a whole new layer of automation. It's pretty cool.
Putting Hooks to Work: Game-Changing (Literally) Examples
Okay, this is the fun part. Let's move beyond the abstract & talk about some concrete, game-dev-specific ways you can use Claude Code Hooks to make your life easier. These are the kinds of things that, once you set them up, you'll wonder how you ever lived without them.
1. The "Instant Feedback" Loop: Auto-Compile & Run
This is my absolute favorite. Imagine you're working on a new character controller in Unity. You ask Claude to tweak the jump physics. Normally, you'd then have to switch to your Unity editor, wait for it to recompile the scripts, & then hit "Play" to test it. It's not a huge amount of time, but it adds up, & it breaks your flow.
With a
1
PostToolUse
hook, you can automate this entire process. You’d set up a hook that, whenever a C# file (
1
*.cs
) is edited, it automatically runs the Unity command-line to recompile & maybe even start the game in the editor.
Your hook command might look something like this (this is a simplified example):
Now, every time Claude makes a change, your game just… runs. The feedback is immediate. You can see the effect of the change in seconds, not minutes. This is HUGE for iterating quickly on gameplay mechanics.
2. The "Always Polished" Asset Pipeline
Game development isn't just code; it's also a mountain of assets. Textures, models, sound files, you name it. And often, these assets need to be processed. Maybe your 3D models need to be converted to a specific format, or your textures need to be compressed to save space.
You can set up a
1
PostToolUse
hook to watch your asset folders. When a new file is added, the hook can trigger a script to do whatever you need.
New
1
.png
in your
1
Textures
folder? The hook could automatically run a tool like ImageMagick to resize it to power-of-two dimensions & apply compression.
New
1
.fbx
model dropped in? The hook could trigger a Blender script to clean it up, set the scale, & export it in the format your engine prefers.
New
1
.wav
file for a sound effect? The hook could use FFmpeg to convert it to
1
.ogg
for better in-game performance.
This means you can just dump raw assets into your project, & your hook-powered pipeline takes care of the rest. No more manual, repetitive processing.
3. The "Game-Specific Linter"
Every game has its own coding conventions & potential pitfalls. Maybe you have a rule that no script should ever use
1
FindObjectOfType
in an
1
Update
loop because it's terrible for performance. Or maybe you have a specific naming convention for your game's event system.
You can create your own simple linter script (in Python, or whatever you're comfortable with) that checks for these game-specific issues. Then, you use a
1
PreToolUse
hook to run this linter on any file Claude is about to edit.
If your linter finds a problem, the hook can block the action & feed the error message back to Claude. So, Claude will see "Hey, you're about to use a performance-killing function here, please refactor it." This is like having an automated code review that enforces your project's best practices, keeping your codebase clean & performant.
4. The "One-Click Test Build"
You've just finished a new feature. You've been iterating with Claude, & now you want to send a build to your friend to test it out. This usually involves a bunch of manual steps: opening your game engine, going to the build settings, creating the build, zipping it up, & uploading it somewhere.
With a
1
Stop
hook, you can automate this whole chain. When you're done with a task & Claude stops, you could have a hook that kicks off your game engine's command-line build process. Once the build is complete, the script could then zip the file & upload it to a service like Itch.io's command-line tool, butler, or even just a shared Dropbox folder.
You finish your work, & a few minutes later, you get a notification that a fresh test build is ready to go. It’s seamless.
The Bigger Picture: AI is Reshaping Game Development
These hook examples are just the tip of the iceberg. They're part of a much larger trend: AI is fundamentally changing how games are made. The numbers don't lie. The AI in gaming market is projected to grow from around $1 billion to over $4.6 billion by 2028. That’s a massive leap, & it’s because AI is proving to be incredibly effective.
Studies have shown that AI-powered tools can reduce development time by as much as 30%. Over 60% of game developers are already using AI in their workflows, not just for coding, but for creating procedural landscapes, generating dialogue, & even balancing game mechanics.
This isn't about replacing developers. It's about augmenting them. It's about handling the tedious, time-consuming tasks so that developers can focus on what really matters: creativity, innovation, & building fun experiences.
It's a shift we're seeing across all industries, really. Businesses are increasingly turning to AI to handle customer interactions & streamline operations. For example, platforms like Arsturn are making it incredibly easy for businesses to build their own no-code AI chatbots. These bots can be trained on a company's own data to provide instant customer support, answer questions, & engage with website visitors 24/7. It’s all about using AI to automate communication & improve efficiency, which is exactly what we’re aiming for in our game dev workflows with tools like Claude hooks. The goal is the same: let the AI handle the repetitive stuff so the humans can focus on the high-level, creative work.
How to Get Started with a Simple Hook
Okay, so you're convinced. You want to try this out. Getting started is actually pretty simple. You'll need to find your Claude settings file, which is usually located in a
1
.claude
folder in your project or user directory. Inside, you'll add a
1
hooks
section.
Here’s what a super simple "Hello World" hook might look like in your settings file (the syntax might be JSON or TOML depending on your setup):