The single most important thing that made me believe AI coding could work (rubyonai.com)

A developer shared their journey with AI coding, particularly their frustrations while working with Claude, AI from Anthropic, which initially struggled to follow explicit coding conventions. After repeatedly facing issues, they discovered that Claude could be enhanced by using "skills," which are sets of instructions that can dynamically improve AI performance on specific tasks. By setting up skills to define Rails conventions, they aimed to guide Claude’s coding practices effectively. However, the AI occasionally failed to load these skills, leading to errors that the developer found particularly exasperating. The breakthrough came when they implemented "hooks," a mechanism that ensures Claude loads the necessary skills before allowing any code edits. This prevented Claude from bypassing critical conventions and significantly improved the overall coding workflow. The integration of skills and hooks empowers developers to enforce coding standards and improve testability within their projects, demonstrating a practical solution to AI limitations in software development. This experience highlights the potential for structured AI assistance in coding and emphasizes the importance of context and enforcement mechanisms in the AI development process.