Tore Nestenius, a Microsoft .NET MVP, has published a practical guide to building a real-time monitoring system for Claude Code hooks using .NET.
Claude Code hooks are automation triggers that fire when specific events happen during a Claude Code session - things like file edits, command execution, or tool calls. They let developers add custom behavior on top of the agent: logging what it's doing, enforcing security policies, or routing events to external systems.
Nestenius's guide walks through building what he calls a "Coding Agent Explorer" - a .NET application that intercepts hook events and displays them as they happen. The practical upside is full visibility into what Claude Code is actually doing during a session, which matters when you're handing an AI agent write access to your codebase.
The guide covers initial setup, security considerations for hook implementations, and the event monitoring architecture. For .NET shops that are starting to adopt AI coding assistants, this is one of the first substantial resources showing how to integrate Claude Code's hook system with the Microsoft development stack.
The hook system is one of Claude Code's more underused features for teams that need guardrails around AI-assisted development. Being able to intercept and react to agent actions before they take effect gives developers a safety layer that goes beyond the built-in permission system.