Hooks vs Skills in Claude: the difference that defines system maturity

In the Claude agent ecosystem, two concepts look similar on the surface but serve fundamentally different roles. Only one of them gets talked about. Skills get all the attention — and fairly so. They're easy to grasp: write a markdown file, define a workflow, and you're done. The agent detects it as a reusable pattern. It's like teaching the agent how to do something . Clear input, clear output, shareable across teams. Hooks are a different story. "Skills tell the agent what it can do. Hooks tel