Hook Events

hookwatch captures all 18 Claude Code hook event types. Each event is stored with its full stdin payload in the SQLite database.

Event Types

Event	Description	Category
SessionStart	Session begins	Lifecycle
SessionEnd	Session ends	Lifecycle
Stop	Agent stops	Lifecycle
PreToolUse	Before a tool executes	Tool
PostToolUse	After a tool executes successfully	Tool
PostToolUseFailure	After a tool execution fails	Tool
UserPromptSubmit	User submits a prompt	Input
PermissionRequest	Permission is requested	Input
Notification	System notification	System
ConfigChange	Configuration changed	System
InstructionsLoaded	Instructions loaded	System
PreCompact	Before context compaction	System
SubagentStart	Sub-agent spawned	Agent
SubagentStop	Sub-agent finished	Agent
TaskCompleted	Task marked complete	Agent
TeammateIdle	Teammate becomes idle	Agent
WorktreeCreate	Git worktree created	Workspace
WorktreeRemove	Git worktree removed	Workspace

Event Categories

Lifecycle Events

SessionStart — Fires when a Claude Code session begins. Contains the session ID that links all subsequent events.

SessionEnd — Fires when the session ends normally.

Stop — Fires when the agent stops execution (may occur multiple times per session if the agent pauses and resumes).

Tool Events

PreToolUse — Fires before each tool call. Contains the tool name and input parameters. This is the most frequent event type in a typical session.

PostToolUse — Fires after a successful tool call. Contains the tool output.

PostToolUseFailure — Fires after a tool call fails. Contains the error information.

Input Events

UserPromptSubmit — Fires when the user submits a prompt. Contains the prompt text.

PermissionRequest — Fires when Claude Code requests permission to perform an action. Contains the tool name and operation details.

System Events

Notification — System notifications with subtypes: permission_prompt, idle_prompt, auth_success, elicitation_dialog.

ConfigChange — Fires when the Claude Code configuration changes.

InstructionsLoaded — Fires when CLAUDE.md or other instruction files are loaded. Present in the Agent SDK types but not yet in the hooks reference docs.

PreCompact — Fires before context compaction (when the conversation is too long and needs to be summarized).

Agent Events

SubagentStart / SubagentStop — Fire when sub-agents are spawned and completed.

TaskCompleted — Fires when a task is marked as complete.

TeammateIdle — Fires when a teammate agent becomes idle (interactive agent teams feature).

Workspace Events

WorktreeCreate / WorktreeRemove — Fire when git worktrees are created or removed.

Common Fields

Every event includes these fields in its stdin payload:

Field	Type	Description
session_id	string	Unique session identifier
hook_event_name	string	Event type name
cwd	string	Working directory

Tool events additionally include:

Field	Type	Description
tool_name	string	Name of the tool
tool_input	object	Tool input parameters

For the full stdin schema, see Hook Input Schema.

Source of Truth

hookwatch uses the EVENT_NAMES array in src/types.ts as the single source of truth for all event types. If Claude Code adds new events, they are automatically handled — unknown events are stored with event type "unknown".

Reference

• 17 events are documented in the Claude Code hooks reference
• InstructionsLoaded is the 18th — present in the Agent SDK