Week 1 · Thu, Sep 17, 2026 · Claude Code settings, hooks, sessions, and Skills · Taught by Carson Weeks
Get more out of your AI coding assistant
A tour of the hidden manual for Claude Code: the settings, hooks, and commands most people never find in the docs. We made the assistant tell us when it's done, kept multiple sessions straight, saved a repeatable prompt as a Skill, and talked through when a bigger model is worth the cost.
What we covered
Your settings live in two places
~/.claude/settings.json applies to every project. A .claude/settings.local.json inside a project overrides it for just that project.
Small settings, big quality of life
Full-screen mode turns on mouse support. Attribution settings stop the assistant from tagging itself as co-author on every commit and pull request. Another setting stops it from quietly switching models mid-task.
Hooks run your commands at key moments
Play a sound when the assistant finishes or needs you, auto-format code it writes, or get an alert if it touches files you told it to leave alone.
See your context at a glance
/statusline lets you describe the status bar you want, like a live percentage of the context window used, and the assistant writes it for you.
Keep many sessions straight
claude -c reopens your last session, /resume picks any past one, /rename and /color label them, and /btw asks a side question without cluttering the main conversation. You can fork that side question into its own session.
A Skill is a saved prompt
If you keep typing the same instructions, save them as a Skill in your .claude folder. It becomes a command you can run, and the assistant can call it on its own when it fits. MCP goes further by connecting the assistant to remote servers.
Pick the model for the job
Smaller models for simple questions, Sonnet as your everyday default, Opus for heavy software engineering. Plan with a strong model (Shift+Tab into plan mode), then build. Switching models mid-session throws away the prompt cache, so you pay full price again.
Try it yourself
About 15 minutes. Claude Code installed in your terminal or editor. The desktop app reads the same settings file.
- Open ~/.claude/settings.json (create it if it's missing) and turn off commit and pull request attribution.
- Add a Stop hook that plays a sound when the assistant finishes, then ask it something and walk away.
- Run /statusline and ask for a context-window percentage.
- Name your current session with /rename, give it a color with /color, then quit and reopen it with claude -c.
- Pick a prompt you repeat often and save it as a Skill in your project's .claude folder.
Fellows turn in homework through Google Classroom. The Classroom link is on the last slide.
Want the full fellowship?
Classes are open to everyone. Fellows also get homework feedback in Google Classroom, a cohort Discord role, office hours, and priority seats at the hackathon.