Every job posting in 2026 says "AI experience required" or "familiarity with AI tools." But what does that actually mean for developers who aren't building LLMs from scratch? I've been reading job postings obsessively for the past two months. Extracted keywords from hundreds of them. Here's what companies actually want when they say "AI skills" — and it's probably not what you think. What "AI experience" means in most job postings I ran 200+ recent job postings through a keyword extractor and categorized every AI-related requirement. The results surprised me. What they actually want (90% of postings): Experience using AI coding assistants (Copilot, Cursor, Claude) Ability to write effective prompts for code generation, review, and debugging Understanding of when AI output is reliable vs.…