I do not have a source for this, but I think that pseudo-grip refers to those hooks that can only be implemented by a module that first implements a different, different hook.
For example, in Drupal 6, we had hook_access()modules that could be implemented (in any case, successfully) by modules that are first implemented hook_node_info()to determine the type of node.
Drupal 7 hook_field_is_empty(). ( ), hook_field_info() .
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