Hooks turn Claude Code from a chatbot into a system you control. Five hooks I wrote and kept — what each does, when it fires, the failure mode it prevents, and the code.
Skip the protocol theory. Build a working Model Context Protocol server in TypeScript, wire it into Claude Code, and make a real agent call a real tool in under an hour. Code, traps, and how to know it works.
Plain vector RAG can't answer multi-hop or 'across everything' questions — the answer is spread across chunks that no single chunk contains. GraphRAG extracts a knowledge graph instead. Here's how it works, the honest cost, and how to start in Postgres without a graph database.
Half the 'how to become an AI engineer' advice tells you to start with linear algebra. After years on backend, here's the honest, narrower path — what to learn, what to skip, and what the job actually looks like in 2026.
If a junior can ship a feature in a day with Claude Code, what's the senior engineer actually for? The skills that get you promoted in 2026 — and the ones that quietly stopped counting.
Anyone with Cursor and an afternoon can ship a prototype. The gap between that and a production system isn't speed — it's the judgment to know what's actually right. The case for taste as the 2026 differentiator.