Welcome to HowToShipIt — practical how-to guides for developers: code, AI tools, and servers, explained step by step.
Claude Code hooks are one of the most powerful features in the AI coding assistant — and one of the least used. A hook is a shell command (or an LLM prompt, a subagent, or an HTTP endpoint) that runs automatically at a specific point in Claude Code’s lifecycle: before a tool executes, after a … Read more
You have probably had this moment: you spend twenty minutes explaining your stack, your conventions, and your non-negotiables to Cursor’s Agent, it generates something great, and then the next day — or the next tab — you start all over again. Cursor rules are how you stop repeating yourself. They are persistent, project-level instructions that … Read more
Why a Good CLAUDE.md Changes Everything If you have ever retyped the same instructions into every Claude Code session — “this is a Laravel app, run php artisan test before committing, never touch deployed migrations” — you already understand the problem this file solves. Learning how to write claude.md properly is the highest-leverage thing you … Read more
Last verified: October 2026. Free tiers change — sometimes without notice — so treat every limit below as “as of today” and check the linked pricing page before you plan around it. Most “free AI tools for developers” lists are recycled affiliate bait. They promise “100% free,” then every link leads to a 7-day trial … Read more