The senior engineer's guide to AI coding: Context loading, custom hooks, and automation

This episode of "How I AI" features John Lindquist, an AI-powered engineering tools expert, discussing advanced techniques for leveraging AI in coding. Lindquist emphasizes the importance of context and diagrams, particularly Mermaid diagrams, for AI to effectively understand application workflows. He details how to preload context using these diagrams and system prompts in Claude Code, significantly improving the speed and accuracy of AI-driven code edits. The conversation explores the use of file types like Markdown and JSON for injecting context into LLMs, and the potential of command-line interfaces for rapid prototyping. Lindquist also shares his workflow for maintaining high code quality using Claude hooks for automated error checking and committing, advocating for a shift towards AI-assisted investigation and documentation in software engineering.