The method: hooks, skills, quality gates and agentic engineering applied to real code.
**Claude Code** is a coding agent that lives in your *terminal*: it reads the project, edits files and runs commands on its own. This guide lays out everything you need to go from ==curious to productive== — install, the rules file, permissions, external tools, hooks, subagents and the token bill — and each chapter points to the deep-dive tutorial I already wrote.
**TDD** is the perfect leash for a coding agent: the test written *first* defines the behaviour, and the agent writes ==only the code that makes it pass==. In this tutorial I build a **.NET Minimal API** with *Claude Code* in pure red-green-refactor, and I mount two guardrails: a **Stop hook** that re-runs dotnet test whenever the agent tries to call itself "done", and a **subagent** that checks the tests were not weakened.
The review loop I run locally with *Claude Code* — diff, critique, fix — can run on its own in CI. With **claude-code-action**, every pull request allowed by the trigger and fork policy gets an ==automatic review==, while an authorized collaborator can use an @claude mention to request an answer or a code change. I start in **non-interactive mode** (claude -p), move the prompt into GitHub Actions, and set separate guardrails for ==tools, turns, budget and permissions==.
A **PreToolUse hook** in *Claude Code* is the simplest, most reliable barrier to stop the agent from opening, reading or editing sensitive files — .env, keys, credentials, private folders. I walk through the setup I use: a tiny script that reads the JSON on stdin, checks the path of a Read/Edit/Write call and ==exits with code 2== to block the tool before it runs, returning a message Claude reads and understands. A few lines of bash, one entry in settings.json, and your repo is ==shielded== from even the most eager agent.
A **skill** is a folder with a SKILL.md file: instructions *Claude Code* loads only when needed, not on every turn like CLAUDE.md. In this guide I build a real one — changelog-entry, which drafts a changelog section from the commits since the last tag — covering ==dynamic context==, arguments, pre-approved tools, supporting files and testing with skill-creator, down to choosing between a personal, project, or plugin skill.
**Hooks** turn *Claude Code* from a persuadable assistant into a system with guarantees: they are shell commands that fire at precise points of the lifecycle and can ==block an action or fix it automatically==. In this guide I build four real *quality gates* — format and lint on PostToolUse, blocking dangerous commands on PreToolUse, mandatory green tests on Stop, project context on SessionStart — covering events, matchers, exit codes and JSON output.
On 1 June 2026 **GitHub Copilot's consumption-based billing** came into effect and Andrej Karpathy officially declared *vibe coding* a closed chapter, replaced by **agentic engineering**. ==For Italian SMEs this is not a semantic nuance==: the cost model changes, governance changes, and who can actually bring AI into production changes. Here is what to do in the next 8 weeks.
**Vibe coding** is the practice of delegating part of the code-writing to a *conversational AI assistant*, keeping the ==developer in the driving seat==. It is not hype: it is a **process change** that requires tools, policies, and metrics. Here is how to introduce it seriously.