VS Code + Claude Code for Joomla — honest thoughts?

The kit is the beginning. Not the end. It gives you a foundation -- module positions, typography system, colour tokens. What you build on top of that foundation is where the real work happens.

Real work. You know what I miss? Just editing a CSS file directly. Open it, change the colour, save, refresh. Now everything's a conversation with a machine that sometimes decides to refactor your entire stylesheet.

Then give it better constraints. 'Only modify the header section. Do not change any other styles.' Constraints are how you control the output. Without them, you're just hoping.

Constraints and context. Those are the two pillars. Claude Code reads your entire project structure, so it already has context. Your job is to add the constraints that focus its attention.

I set up a system where every prompt starts with 'You are working on a Joomla 5 template. The CSS uses custom properties defined in :root. Do not add inline styles.' Saves me from style soup every time.

That's clever. A persistent system prompt for Joomla work. I've been inconsistent with my instructions and the results show it. Some overrides are beautiful, others look like they were written by a different developer entirely.