The single most important thing that made me believe AI coding could work

AI coding assistants often ignore instructions and coding conventions, leading to frustration. The breakthrough came from using Claude's "skills" feature combined with "hooks" - pre-edit scripts that block file modifications unless the appropriate skill is loaded. This forcing function ensures the AI reads and follows project-specific conventions before making changes. The author shares their Rails convention skills and enforcement hooks that transformed their AI coding workflow from unreliable to dependable.