For months I’ve resisted making my coding-agent setup any easier than it already is. The one convenience I kept meaning to add, and kept putting off, was a sound that fires when Claude finishes a task. Today I finally did it, and I’m not sure yet whether it’s good for me.
I occasionally wake up around 3am. This morning I couldn’t get back to sleep, so from about 4am I started reading the Heart Sutra. It had been a while, and I fell right into it, making notes, genuinely absorbed. I didn’t want to break the focus, and that’s when it clicked. A ping when Claude finished would let me stay buried in the Sutra while it worked in the background, surfacing only when it called me back.
First I needed a sound. Here’s what macOS gives you.
ls -la /System/Library/Sounds
I listened to all of them and settled on Glass.aiff as my new work partner. Then
I added it to my Claude settings.
diff --git a/claude/.claude/settings.json b/claude/.claude/settings.json
index a60aa8d..55660ea 100644
--- a/claude/.claude/settings.json
+++ b/claude/.claude/settings.json
@@ -48,6 +48,18 @@
}
}
},
+ "hooks": {
+ "Stop": [
+ {
+ "hooks": [
+ {
+ "type": "command",
+ "command": "afplay /System/Library/Sounds/Glass.aiff"
+ }
+ ]
+ }
+ ]
+ },
"effortLevel": "medium",
"promptSuggestionEnabled": false,
"tui": "fullscreen",
Headphones on, no music, and I started working.
My world changed. This one small thing has made me strangely productive and focused. It works like an accidental Pomodoro. I lock into whatever I’m doing, reading, reviewing, testing, and when the ping comes I relax and go back to Claude to check its work. The loop is oddly pleasant and I can’t quite put my finger on why. Maybe this is how dogs get trained so easily.
I’ve also caught myself breaking each instruction into smaller increments than before. Maybe I’m being reinforced by that satisfying done-sound, or by the feeling of being needed by Claude, my ever-eager junior engineer.