install

Install Guard Hooks

This skill installs the guard-destructive and guard-edits hooks into the user's ~/.claude/settings.json.

Prerequisites

• jq must be installed and available in the user's PATH (the hooks use it to parse tool input)

Steps

1. Check if jq is available by running jq --version. If not found, tell the user to install it first (winget install jqlang.jq on Windows, brew install jq on macOS, apt install jq on Linux).

2. Read ~/.claude/settings.json to check if hooks are already configured.

3. If no hooks key exists, add the following to the top level of the settings JSON:

"hooks": {
  "PreToolUse": [
    {
      "matcher": "Bash",
      "hooks": [
        {
          "type": "command",
          "command": "bash \"$HOME/.claude/hooks/guard-destructive.sh\""
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "matcher": "Edit|Write",
      "hooks": [
        {
          "type": "command",
          "command": "bash \"$HOME/.claude/hooks/guard-edits.sh\""
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

4. Copy the hook scripts from the plugin to ~/.claude/hooks/:

   • guard-destructive.sh
   • guard-edits.sh

5. Tell the user to restart their Claude Code session for the hooks to take effect.

If hooks already exist

If ~/.claude/settings.json already has a hooks.PreToolUse array, append the guard hook entries to the existing array rather than overwriting. Check for duplicates first — skip any matcher that already has a guard hook configured.