March 31, 2026
When your AI gets a boss
Show HN: Free AI Coding Skills for Rails
Developers are teaching AI to code like a grumpy senior dev – and the internet is fighting about it
TLDR: A new free tool teaches AI coding assistants to follow a strict, real-world Ruby on Rails style so they write less messy, more reliable apps. The community is split between loving the “AI as disciplined junior dev” idea and mocking it as overcontrolled, arguing about whether guided bots beat creative chaos.
Developers are losing their minds over a free “AI coding coach” that promises to make chatbots write Ruby on Rails apps the way seasoned pros do, not like overexcited interns copy‑pasting from the internet. The project ships rules that tell your AI to calm down, write less code, and stick to battle‑tested patterns used by 37signals, the famously opinionated team behind Basecamp and HEY. Fans are calling it “therapy for chaotic AI,” claiming it finally stops their bot from building fragile, overcomplicated messes.
But the drama? Oh, it’s spicy. One camp is thrilled that this turns AI into a disciplined junior developer who follows house rules. Another camp is screaming that it’s “Rails brainwashing,” accusing the tool of locking people into one company’s way of thinking. Some are joking that we’ve gone full circle: humans spent years escaping strict coding bosses, only to install one inside their AI. Others are memeing about AI agents showing up to code review saying, “I used to be fun, but now I write maintainable code.”
The biggest fight: is this the future of AI—tightly guided and opinionated—or should bots stay wild and creative? Either way, everyone agrees on one thing: the era of letting AI “wing it” on real apps might be over.
Key Points
- •The project provides open-source AI coding skills that teach AI agents to write Ruby on Rails code using battle-tested, senior-level patterns.
- •The skills are compatible with Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, and other agents that support skills, and can be installed via terminal commands or a GitHub ZIP download.
- •All three skills install together to form a single, opinionated Rails stack modeled on how 37signals builds applications such as Basecamp and HEY.
- •The skills aim to reduce unnecessary custom code, resulting in fewer bugs, lower maintenance costs, and less time spent fixing avoidable issues.
- •They guide AI to organize application logic and common building blocks clearly and traceably, making code easier to change, test, and hand off to other developers.