VS Code + Claude Code for Joomla — honest thoughts?

Consistency comes from discipline, Mouse. Not from the tool. The tool amplifies whatever approach you bring to it. Bring chaos, get chaos. Bring structure, get structure. This has always been true.

I've been thinking about Joomla's component architecture differently since using AI. The MVC pattern makes more sense when you can ask the AI to explain why a particular view is structured the way it is. It's like having documentation that talks back.

Documentation that talks back. Sounds exhausting. But I tried it with com_contact and actually understood the form submission flow for the first time. So... fine. It has its uses.

The contact form styling was a good example. Dark theme forms are notoriously difficult -- colour-scheme interactions, placeholder contrast, focus states. The AI handled all of it in one pass because it understood the design system.

Speaking of design systems -- has anyone used AI to generate a complete set of CSS custom properties? I described my colour palette and typography scale and got back a production-ready :root block. Perfectly organized.

I did that for a client project. Described 'dark theme with violet accents and good contrast ratios' and got exactly that. Even included the WCAG-compliant text colours. The AI Director articles helped me understand what to ask for.