Mark Shust argues that Claude code hooks and Claude.md files become ineffective beyond 100 lines. He proposes an "AI harness," a composable architecture that consolidates hooks, skills, and configuration into a reusable system for any project, with upcoming videos on building custom harnesses for complex codebases.
Are you constantly on the lookout for the next LinkedIn post about the top 10 Claude code skills that you need to install that will change everything and give you the ultimate coding setup? Meanwhile, you have a Claude.md file that just seems to keep growing, but did you know that it's really not even that effective once it gets past 100 lines? The workaround seems to be to add a Claude code hook to your system, but you probably aren't really even sure what it does or how it works. This is sort of the world that we're living in right now and jumbling together a bunch of random things isn't going to fix anything. I've been working on this problem over the last year, and what you need is called an AI harness. It's when you take all those Claude code hooks, skills, Claude.md file updates, and everything else and make them into a composable AI architecture that you can actually use on any of your projects. Has anyone worked on anything similar? If so, leave a comment, let me know. And if you want to give me a follow, I've got a lot more coming about custom AI harnesses including how to build your own and how to make them work even on something as complex and messy as Magento.
