I believe that an important job (of the many jobs) that rules and DMs do, is validating player actions. If I rolled against a character ability that I invested in, and made it, I feel like I deserve it. If I just declare it happens... then that can come to feel invalid. There are narrative approaches that also work, although so far I find they serve smaller groups - one or two players - due to the effort to weave validation out of narrative alone.
I suppose it depends on what you mean exactly by "rules." My read on D&D 5e is that since the DM is tasked with deciding whether or not there's some kind of roll to resolve your proposed action, then the best strategy (if more success than failure is the goal) is to work to remove uncertainty from the situation and/or the meaningful consequence of failure, if you're able to. Those two things need to be present for the DM to call for an ability check. Remove at least one of them and the DM doesn't call for a check (in theory). It's not always possible, but this seems like the appropriate way to approach it.
Class features, skill proficiencies, feats, equipment, Inspiration, etc. then become your "insurance," if you will, something that bends the chances of success in your favor for those times you do have to roll. With that in mind, I detect some contradictions when someone desires the dice to "ratify" their decisions and to make the action "real" when the best outcome is for the DM to simply narrate success instead of asking for a roll.
As an aside, I've discussed this with my regular players and they tell me that needing to roll an ability check in my games is fairly terrifying, compared to other games, because I do take the "meaningful consequence of failure" bit quite seriously. Rather than a result of "nothing happens,"
something will happen and it's
not going to be good. So you want to avoid that roll if you can, and spend Inspiration if you fall short of automatic success. Which incentivizes the players to go after getting Inspiration more times per session, which naturally means the characters are being very colorfully portrayed according to their personal characteristics. It's an interesting feedback loop.