When your code speaks Rails instead of the domain

I'm making a collectible limited-edition Ruby stained glass

Ever since I talked about my journey as a stained-glass maker turned developer on the IndieRails podcast, I’ve had this wild idea living rent-free in my head: what if I made a collector’s stained glass in tribute to Ruby?

RAG gives models memory.

Training gives them their nature. And when context becomes incomplete, the scorpion returns. My latest thoughts on local AI, Ruby, and why RAG isn’t a magic solution. #ruby #ai #ollama #rubyonrails Read more

rails-css_unused v0.2.1 — Find unused CSS classes in Rails apps, with smart dynamic

rails-css_unused is a static analysis gem that scans your stylesheets and all view files to report CSS classes that are defined but never used — no server required, no browser, pure file scanning. Read more

The Developer's Way to Track Traffic: Self-Hosting Ackee or Plausible

I recently took a long look at my Rails projects and realized I was carrying around a piece of… Read more

rails-tenantify — row-level multi-tenancy for Rails 7+

rails-tenantify adds row-level multi-tenancy to Rails 7+ apps — one database, one organization_id column, no external service. Read more

I Used Claude Code for 30 Days on My Rails App. Here's What I Learned

Spent 30 days using Claude Code as my primary AI assistant on a real Rails monolith. Not a toy app, not a tutorial project. Read more

I thought I needed a better AI model.

What I actually needed was better access to my own knowledge. Read more

Count, Length, or Size? Avoiding ActiveRecord Performance Traps

I remember when I first started with Rails, I thought .count, .length, and .size were exactly the… Read more

rails-persona — behavioral analytics for Rails models, no Mixpanel needed

rails-persona adds first-class behavioral tracking to any ActiveRecord model. Define trackable actions with a DSL, then query frequency, inactivity, leaderboards, and daily activity patterns — all in your own database. Supports async Sidekiq tracking and bulk inserts. A focused alternative to ahoy for model-level analytics. Read more

Implementing account-specific rate limits in Rails

How Rails Finds the View to Render

Rails does not render views by guessing filenames. It builds a template lookup query from the controller, action, format, variant, handler, and view paths, then asks Action View to resolve the best matching template. Read more

asgard v0.3.0 release Thor and Loki working for you!

I got tied of cussing the CLI task running that I’ve been using for a few years. It was good but it wasn’t Ruby. So I wrote my own. The power of The Mighty Thor for a great CLI experience with Loki managing the tricks of the trade. The power of Ruby endorsed by every mythical god of the higher realms. Read more

From ERB to Phlex: 5 Steps to Pure Ruby Views

I love Rails, but I’ve always found ERB to be a bit messy. You spend your whole day jumping between… Read more

View Primitives

I like the simplicity of traditional Rails apps and the component-based approach of ViewComponent, but I always felt the ecosystem was missing something like shadcn/ui. So I built View Primitives — a collection of reusable UI primitives powered by ViewComponent. Would love to hear your feedback.

UUID v7 vs. ULID: Which Sortable ID Should You Choose?

For a long time, if you wanted a primary key that was both unique and chronological, you reached for… Read more

Parse YAML 3x faster with rapidyaml bindings for Ruby

An impromptu lightning talk at Rubycon

Last week, I spent an extended weekend in Rimini, Italy, for the first edition of Rubycon. I decided to present an impromptu lightning talk to connect my reconversion story with the current trend of freezing hires of junior developers, and our responsibility as a community to offset/fight that trend.

Running local AI for Ruby development with Ollama, Aider, and VSCode.

No cloud APIs. No telemetry. No proprietary code leaving your machine. Read more

AI Didn't Create These Problems. It Just Stopped Routing Around Them.

Your codebase has gaps that only exist because the right people know to step over them. Read more

Stop Making Ugly Apps: Simple Tailwind Tricks for Backend Developers

I know the feeling of opening a blank index.html.erb file and having no idea how to make it look… Read more

Building user-customizable themes with Tailwind CSS

— Using OKLCH you can tweak one custom property, e.g. :root { --color-value: 60; } and get a UI in all the colours of the rainbow! 🌈😊

Inside Ruby’s OpenSSL stdlib:

how Ruby bridges native OpenSSL C APIs into elegant Ruby APIs powering HTTPS, TLS, certificates, digests, encryption, and secure communication across the Ruby ecosystem. Read more

The Better Primary Key: A Guide to ULIDs for Rails Developers

In a previous article, I talked about Snowflake IDs. They are great, but they require a bit of… Read more

Inside Ruby’s proc.c:

closures, bindings, lambdas, &:symbol, and VM internals powering every block you write. Read more