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Ruby on Rails AI

Anthropic Message Batches in Rails: Cut Claude API Costs 50% with Async Batch Processing

Anthropic Message Batches in Rails: cut Claude API costs 50% with async batch processing, Solid Queue polling and idempotent result handling. Production patterns.

April 30, 2026

Roger Heykoop

Ruby on Rails Security

Rails 8 Authentication Generator: Build Production Sessions Without Devise

Rails 8 authentication generator in production: sessions, password reset, rate limiting, OAuth and the migration path from Devise after nineteen years of Rails.

April 29, 2026

Roger Heykoop

Ruby on Rails Postgres

Rails Postgres Table Partitioning: Time-Based Partitions for Large Tables in Production

Rails Postgres table partitioning for huge tables: time-based partitions, pg_partman, indexes, gotchas and a no-downtime migration playbook from production.

April 28, 2026

Roger Heykoop

Ruby on Rails AI

Anthropic Prompt Caching in Rails: Cut Claude API Costs with the Anthropic Ruby SDK

Anthropic prompt caching in Rails: cut Claude API costs up to 90% using the Anthropic Ruby SDK. Production patterns, traps and real numbers from the field.

April 27, 2026

Roger Heykoop

Ruby on Rails Postgres

Rails Postgres Advisory Locks: Stop Cron Overlap and Race Conditions in Production

Rails Postgres advisory locks: stop cron overlap, race conditions and double processing. Production patterns and traps after nineteen years of Rails.

April 26, 2026

Roger Heykoop

Ruby on Rails Security

Rails Pundit Authorization: Production Patterns for Multi-Tenant SaaS Apps

Rails Pundit authorization for multi-tenant SaaS: scopes, policies, role-based access, and the production traps that bite teams in their first security audit.

April 25, 2026

Roger Heykoop

Ruby on Rails DevOps

Rails Puma Tuning: Workers, Threads, Memory and Concurrency for Production Performance

Rails Puma tuning in production: picking worker counts, thread pool size, memory budgets, and the copy-on-write settings that actually move the needle.

April 24, 2026

Roger Heykoop

Ruby on Rails DevOps

Rails Solid Cache: Database-Backed Caching in Rails 8 Without Redis or Memcached

Rails Solid Cache in production: disk-backed caching in Postgres, encryption, eviction, trimming, sizing, and when it beats Redis or Memcached.

April 23, 2026

Roger Heykoop

AI in Rails Ruby on Rails

Rails RAG: Build a Production Retrieval Augmented Generation System with Claude and pgvector

Rails RAG guide: build a production retrieval augmented generation pipeline with pgvector, Claude and streaming. Real code, real chunking, real tradeoffs.

April 22, 2026

Roger Heykoop

Ruby on Rails DevOps

Postgres Autovacuum Tuning for Rails: Stop Table Bloat and Transaction ID Wraparound in Production

Postgres autovacuum tuning for Rails in production. Stop table bloat, prevent transaction ID wraparound and tame lock storms with practical settings.

April 21, 2026

Roger Heykoop

Ruby on Rails DevOps

Rails Solid Queue: Background Jobs in Postgres Without Redis or Sidekiq

Rails Solid Queue in production: Postgres-backed background jobs, configuration, concurrency, scheduled tasks, and when to stay on Sidekiq instead.

April 20, 2026

Roger Heykoop

Ruby on Rails DevOps

Rails Postgres JSONB: Query Patterns, Indexing and Production Best Practices

Rails Postgres JSONB in production: query patterns, GIN indexes, store_accessor, safe migrations, and when to choose JSONB over normalized Rails tables.

April 19, 2026

Roger Heykoop

Ruby on Rails DevOps

Rails Full-Text Search: pg_search, tsvector and Postgres Without Elasticsearch

Rails full-text search with pg_search: tsvector indexes, ranked results, trigram similarity, and why Postgres replaces Elasticsearch for most apps.

April 17, 2026

Roger Heykoop

Ruby on Rails DevOps

Rails Active Storage S3: Direct Uploads, Variants and Production Configuration

Rails Active Storage S3 direct uploads: image variants, background processing, presigned URLs, virus scanning and a complete production configuration.

April 15, 2026

Roger Heykoop

Ruby on Rails DevOps

Rails Webhook Processing: Signature Verification, Idempotency and Background Delivery

Rails webhook processing done right: HMAC signature verification, idempotent handlers, Stripe and GitHub examples, background jobs and error recovery.

April 14, 2026

Roger Heykoop

Ruby on Rails DevOps

Ruby on Rails Feature Flags: Complete Guide with Flipper, Rollout and Custom Redis Implementation

Ship Rails features safely with feature flags. Flipper setup, custom Redis flags, percentage rollouts, CI/CD integration, testing strategies and common pitfalls.

April 13, 2026

Roger Heykoop

Fractional CTO Ruby on Rails

What I Do First When I Inherit a Legacy Rails Codebase

A fractional CTO's practical framework for the first 30 days taking over someone else's Rails app. Where to look, what to fix, how to write an honest assessment.

April 13, 2026

Roger Heykoop

AI Ruby on Rails

LLM Function Calling in Rails: Teaching the Model to Use Your App

Function calling lets LLMs invoke your Rails code directly. Here's how to build reliable tool-use integrations that hold up in production.

April 12, 2026

Roger Heykoop

DevOps Ruby on Rails

PgBouncer and Rails: Connection Pooling That Doesn't Blow Up Your Database

Most Rails apps eventually hit Postgres connection exhaustion. Here's how to configure PgBouncer correctly—and the transaction-mode gotchas that will bite you.

April 11, 2026

Roger Heykoop

Fractional CTO Ruby on Rails

Technical Due Diligence on a Rails Codebase: What I Actually Check

Before you acquire a company or sign on as fractional CTO, here's the Rails codebase audit I run every time — and what the findings usually mean.

April 10, 2026

Roger Heykoop

AI in Rails Ruby on Rails

Streaming LLM Responses in Rails: Stop Making Users Stare at a Spinner

Add real-time streaming to your Rails LLM features using Action Controller::Live and Server-Sent Events. Practical code, Puma thread setup, and nginx config.

April 09, 2026

Roger Heykoop

Rails Upgrades Ruby on Rails

How to Upgrade a Rails App Without a Big-Bang Rewrite

An incremental strategy for upgrading legacy Rails apps from 6.1 to 8.0 in production — without burning it down or blocking your team for six months.

April 08, 2026

Roger Heykoop

AI in Rails Ruby on Rails

Semantic Search in Rails with pgvector: From Zero to Production

Add semantic search to your Rails app using pgvector and OpenAI embeddings. Real code, real migrations, and production tuning with HNSW indexes — under 150 lines.

April 08, 2026

Roger Heykoop

rails

Rails ActiveRecord Callbacks: When They Help and When They'll Burn You

ActiveRecord callbacks save time until they create untraceable bugs. Learn which callbacks are safe, which to avoid, and what to use instead in Rails 7+ and 8 applications with real production examples.

March 29, 2026

TTB Software

rails

Build Custom Rails 8 Generators to Eliminate Repetitive Boilerplate

Stop copying and pasting the same service object scaffolding. Write a custom Rails generator in under 30 minutes that enforces your team's patterns automatically.

March 28, 2026

TTB Software

ruby

Ruby Ractors: Real Parallel Processing Without the GVL

Ruby’s Global VM Lock (GVL, formerly GIL) has been the standard excuse for reaching for Go or Elixir when you need true parallelism. Ractors, introduced in Ruby 3.0, break that...

March 26, 2026

TTB Software

ruby-on-rails

Debug Memory Leaks in Ruby on Rails: A Production Hunting Guide

Memory leaks in Rails apps are rarely actual leaks — they're unbounded growth from caches, string retention, and forgotten callbacks. Here's how to find and fix them using ObjectSpace, derailed_benchmarks,...

March 25, 2026

TTB Software

rails security

Rails Credentials: Managing Secrets in Production Without Losing Your Mind

Rails credentials offer built-in encrypted secrets management. Here's how to set them up per-environment, rotate keys, and avoid the pitfalls that catch most teams in production.

March 24, 2026

TTB Software

devops

Kamal 2 Deploy Rails: Zero-Downtime Deployments Without Kubernetes

Kamal 2 gives Rails teams zero-downtime deployments on bare metal or VPS without the complexity of Kubernetes. This guide walks through setup, configuration, and production-ready deployment of a Rails 8...

March 24, 2026

TTB Software

rails

Rails N+1 Queries: How to Find, Fix, and Prevent Them in Production

N+1 queries are the most common Rails performance killer. Here's how to detect them with Bullet and strict_loading, fix them with includes, preload, and eager_load, and prevent them from ever...

March 23, 2026

TTB Software

ruby

Ruby method_missing: When to Use It and When to Run Away

method_missing is Ruby's most powerful and most abused metaprogramming tool. Here's how to use it correctly in production, with real examples, performance numbers, and the respond_to_missing? rule you must follow....

March 22, 2026

TTB Software

Rate Limiting in Rails with Rack::Attack: A Production Configuration Guide

Set up Rack::Attack in Rails 8 to throttle abusive requests, block bad actors, and protect your API endpoints. Includes production-tested configurations, Redis vs memory store tradeoffs, and monitoring strategies.

March 21, 2026

roger

Ruby Refinements: Scoped Monkey Patching That Won't Blow Up Your App

Ruby refinements let you modify classes within a controlled scope instead of globally. Learn when to use them, how they work under the hood, and where they fall short in production Ruby 3.3+ applications.

March 20, 2026

roger

Rails 8 load_async: Run Database Queries in Parallel and Cut Response Times

How to use load_async, async_count, and async_sum in Rails 8 to parallelize database queries, with benchmarks showing 40-60% faster controller actions.

March 19, 2026

roger

rails testing

Fast Rails Tests: How Minitest and Fixtures Outperform Factory-Heavy Suites

Speed up your Rails test suite by switching from factories to fixtures and using Minitest effectively. Includes benchmarks, migration strategies, and parallel testing setup for Rails 8.

March 18, 2026

TTB Software

AI Code Review for Rails: Tools and Workflows That Actually Catch Bugs

How to set up AI-assisted code review in Rails projects using GitHub Copilot, Claude, and custom prompts. Real examples of bugs caught, false positives to expect, and CI integration patterns.

March 17, 2026

roger

Ruby Struct vs Data: Choosing the Right Value Object in Ruby 3.2+

A practical comparison of Ruby's Struct and Data classes for building value objects. Benchmarks, use cases, and migration patterns for Ruby 3.2+ projects.

March 16, 2026

roger

rails

Rails 8 Propshaft: How to Migrate from Sprockets (Step by Step)

Propshaft replaced Sprockets as the default asset pipeline in Rails 8. If you’re upgrading an existing app, the migration isn’t automatic — and the gotchas will cost you hours if...

March 15, 2026

TTB Software

ruby

Ruby Lazy Enumerators: Process Million-Row Datasets Without Blowing Up Memory

Learn how Ruby's Lazy Enumerators let you process enormous datasets line by line, keeping memory flat. Includes benchmarks, real production patterns, and common pitfalls.

March 14, 2026

TTB Software

Ruby on Rails

Rails Concerns: When They Clean Up Code and When They Create Hidden Complexity

A practical guide to Rails ActiveSupport::Concern with real examples of good and bad uses. Learn when concerns reduce duplication, when they create tangled dependencies, and what alternatives work better for each case.

March 13, 2026

Roger Heykoop

Ruby on Rails

Rails 8 Multiple Databases: Read Replicas, Sharding, and Automatic Role Switching

How to configure multiple databases in Rails 8 with read replicas, horizontal sharding, and automatic connection switching. Includes production-tested database.yml configs, migration strategies, and performance benchmarks.

March 12, 2026

Roger Heykoop

Ruby on Rails

Custom Rack Middleware in Rails 8: A Practical Guide with Real Examples

How to write, test, and deploy custom Rack middleware in Rails 8. Covers request timing, tenant detection, request ID propagation, and the middleware stack order that trips everyone up.

March 11, 2026

Roger Heykoop

ruby-on-rails

Rails 8 Solid Cache: Drop Redis and Memcached for Good

Solid Cache stores your Rails cache in the database instead of Redis or Memcached. If you’re running Rails 8, you can cut an entire infrastructure dependency from your stack today....

March 10, 2026

TTB Software

devops

Docker Multi-Stage Builds for Rails 8: Cut Your Image Size by 60%

Step-by-step guide to building production Docker images for Rails 8 using multi-stage builds. Reduce image size from 1.2GB to under 500MB with real Dockerfile examples and benchmarks.

March 09, 2026

TTB Software

ruby

Ruby Proc vs Lambda: The Real Differences and When to Use Each

A practical comparison of Ruby Procs and Lambdas covering argument handling, return behavior, and real-world use cases in Rails applications. Includes Method objects and performance benchmarks.

March 08, 2026

TTB Software

ruby

Ruby Pattern Matching: From Basic case/in to Production Use Cases

Ruby’s pattern matching, introduced in Ruby 2.7 and stabilized in Ruby 3.0, gives you a way to destructure and match complex data structures in a single expression. If you’ve used...

March 07, 2026

TTB Software

fractional-cto

How to Prioritize Technical Debt: A Framework That Actually Works

A practical framework for prioritizing technical debt in startups and growing teams. Covers scoring methods, real examples, and how to sell debt reduction to stakeholders.

March 06, 2026

roger

ruby performance

Ruby frozen_string_literal: What It Does and How to Use It in Production

Learn what Ruby's frozen_string_literal magic comment does, how it reduces memory allocation and prevents mutation bugs, and how to adopt it across a Rails codebase.

March 05, 2026

TTB Software

ruby performance

Ruby YJIT in Production: How to Enable It and What Performance Gains to Expect

A practical guide to enabling YJIT in Ruby 3.3 for production Rails apps. Covers configuration, memory trade-offs, real benchmarks, and monitoring tips.

March 04, 2026

TTB Software

devops

OpenTelemetry in Rails 8: Set Up Production Observability in 30 Minutes

A step-by-step guide to instrumenting a Rails 8 application with OpenTelemetry for traces, metrics, and logs. Includes gem configuration, auto-instrumentation, custom spans, and exporter setup.

March 02, 2026

roger

ruby-on-rails

Rails Turbo Frames: Build Dynamic UIs Without Writing JavaScript

How to use Turbo Frames in Rails 8 to create fast, dynamic interfaces with lazy loading, inline editing, and frame navigation — no custom JavaScript required.

March 01, 2026

roger

Ruby Memoization Patterns: Beyond the Basic ||= Operator

Production-tested Ruby memoization patterns including ||=, fetch-based caching, multi-argument memoization, and thread-safe approaches. Includes benchmarks and gotchas.

February 28, 2026

TTB Software Development

Rate Limit Your Rails API With Rack::Attack (Step-by-Step)

How to add rate limiting to a Rails 8 API using Rack::Attack. Covers throttling, blocklists, custom responses, and production configuration with Redis and Solid Cache.

February 27, 2026

roger

Rails Database Indexing: Fix Slow Queries With the Right Index Strategy

Practical guide to database indexing in Rails. Covers composite indexes, partial indexes, expression indexes, and how to find missing indexes in production.

February 26, 2026

roger

rails security

ActiveRecord Encryption in Rails 7+: Encrypt Sensitive Data Without Leaving Your ORM

A practical guide to encrypting database columns with ActiveRecord Encryption in Rails 7 and 8. Covers setup, key rotation, querying encrypted data, and production gotchas.

February 25, 2026

TTB Software

rails devops

Rails 8 Solid Cable: Drop Redis for WebSockets and Save Yourself a Dependency

How to set up Solid Cable in Rails 8 for Action Cable over SQLite or PostgreSQL. Covers configuration, performance characteristics, migration from Redis, and when you'd still want Redis instead.

February 24, 2026

TTB Software

ruby rails

Ruby Delegation: Forwardable vs SimpleDelegator vs Rails delegate

A practical comparison of Ruby's three main delegation approaches. When to use Forwardable, SimpleDelegator, or Rails delegate — with benchmarks, gotchas, and production patterns.

February 23, 2026

TTB Software

rails devops

Deploy Rails 8 with Kamal 2: A Production-Ready Setup From Scratch

Step-by-step guide to deploying Rails 8 with Kamal 2. Covers server setup, Docker configuration, SSL, database migrations, and the gotchas that bit us in production.

February 22, 2026

TTB Software

ruby rails

Ruby GC Tuning: Cut Rails Memory Bloat and Response Times in Production

Practical Ruby garbage collection tuning for Rails apps. Real RUBY_GC_* environment variables, before/after benchmarks, and the settings that reduced our memory usage by 30% in production.

February 21, 2026

TTB Software

ruby

Ruby Fiber Scheduler: Fast Async I/O Without Callbacks or Threads

How to use Ruby's Fiber Scheduler interface for non-blocking I/O in Ruby 3.3+. Real benchmarks, practical examples, and production patterns that actually work.

February 20, 2026

TTB Software

rails

Rails Service Objects: Patterns That Actually Work in Production

How to build Rails service objects that stay maintainable. Real patterns, naming conventions, error handling, and testing strategies from production codebases.

February 19, 2026

TTB Software

rails

Rails 8 Authentication: The Built-in Generator That Replaces Devise

How to set up authentication in Rails 8 using the new built-in generator. Step-by-step guide covering sessions, password resets, and when you still need Devise.

February 18, 2026

TTB Software

ruby

Ruby Struct vs Data: Which Value Object Fits Your Code?

A practical comparison of Ruby's Struct and Data classes for building value objects. When to use each, performance differences, and real patterns from production Ruby 3.2+ code.

February 17, 2026

TTB Software

case-studies rails

Building Pixevo: Engineering Challenges Behind an AI Image Platform

How we built a multi-model AI image generation platform with Rails — workflow engines, real-time processing, and the architecture decisions that made it work.

February 17, 2026

Roger Heykoop

rails

Rails Strict Loading: How to Catch N+1 Queries Before They Hit Production

Enable strict loading in Rails 6.1+ to detect and prevent N+1 queries at development time. Configuration options, per-model and global setup, and handling the exceptions that pop up.

February 16, 2026

TTB Software

ai

AI Coding Assistants for Rails: What Actually Works and What Wastes Your Time

A practical breakdown of using AI coding assistants (Copilot, Cursor, Claude) in Rails projects. What tasks they handle well, where they fail, and how to structure prompts for Rails-specific code.

February 15, 2026

TTB Software

ruby

Ruby Ractors: Actual Parallel Processing Without Fighting the GVL

How to use Ruby Ractors for true parallel CPU-bound work in Ruby 3.3+. Practical examples, benchmarks, and pitfalls from production use.

February 14, 2026

TTB Software

fractional-cto strategy

Fractional CTO: When Your Startup Needs One (And When It Doesn't)

Every startup hits the same inflection point. Your Rails app works, your first customers are paying, and suddenly everything is on fire. The deploy process is “whoever remembers the steps.”...

February 13, 2026

TTB Software

devops

GitHub Actions for Rails in 2026: A CI/CD Pipeline That Actually Works

A complete GitHub Actions CI/CD pipeline for Rails: parallel tests, service containers, lint-first strategy, and deployment. Under 5 minutes, battle-tested.

February 12, 2026

TTB Software

ruby

Ruby Pattern Matching: Stop Writing Nested if/elsif Chains

Ruby pattern matching with case/in replaces nested conditionals for destructuring hashes, validating API responses, and parsing webhooks. Practical examples for Ruby 3.0+.

February 11, 2026

TTB Software

rails architecture

Multi-Tenancy in Rails: Three Approaches and When Each One Breaks

Scoped queries, schema-per-tenant, or database-per-tenant? A practical comparison of Rails multi-tenancy approaches with real-world breaking points.

February 10, 2026

TTB Software

rails devops

Rails Logging You Can Actually Debug With

Default Rails logs are verbose and useless under pressure. Here's how to set up structured logging that helps you find problems fast — with Lograge, semantic context, and the patterns that work in production.

February 09, 2026

TTB Software

rails devops

Background Jobs in Rails: Choosing Between Solid Queue and Sidekiq in 2026

A practical guide to picking the right background job backend for your Rails app. When Solid Queue makes sense, when Sidekiq still wins, and the patterns that matter regardless of which you choose.

February 08, 2026

TTB Software

rails performance

Rails Caching: What They Don't Tell You in the Tutorials

Fragment caching, Russian Doll patterns, cache invalidation that actually works, and the debugging tricks I've learned from production incidents.

February 07, 2026

TTB Software

rails devops

Feature Flags in Rails: Ship Faster, Break Less

How to implement feature flags in Rails applications for safer deployments, gradual rollouts, and the ability to kill a bad feature without rolling back.

February 07, 2026

TTB Software

DevOps Ruby on Rails

Database Migrations That Won't Wake You at 3 AM

Practical techniques for zero-downtime Rails database migrations. Stop locking tables, start sleeping through the night.

February 06, 2026

Roger Heykoop

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