[Can] a patch can kind of be like a hook?

In the free software world, a patch usually describes a file that lists lines to be added to or removed from another file (or multiple files). The most common use for this is probably with actual source code.

Binary (non-text) patches are also possible, and in Windows a software bug-fix "patch" would likely be mostly binary. In the free software world, it's uncommon to use binary patches for updates; instead the source is patched (either in the main upstream project or by a distribution) and a new binary package is built and published.

Where you create a config file that has symlinks to all the executables like you mentioned?

I don't really understand how those two questions relate, so I may not be able to give you a good answer. Often a configuration file has a variable=value structure, but it would certainly possible to have a list of file paths in a configuration. However, this might instead be implemented as an actual directory (like ~/.config/app/pre-hook.d/) where each executable file in that directory is executed by the "pre" hook in the app. (Configuration directories often work very similarly also.)

Whether the paths are symlinks is likely to be irrelevant, as this is more a filesystem level feature that would often be ignored entirely by the application.

I hope this is helpful.