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DHH's Rails World keynote barely mentioned Rails, and the internet decided that meant Rails is dead. We don't buy it. Ryan took one line from the talk as a direct order and had an agent building his CLI the same day, which raises a bigger question: how much of your working life do you hand to an AI agent, and where do you draw the line? Then we ask whether conferences are still worth the ticket, and when they are. LINKS - DHH's Rails World Keynote - basecamp-cli - Ryan's Website - Brendan's X/Twitter - Brendan's Bluesky --Sponsor-- This episode is brought to you by Flagrant.  Your partners for delivering thoughtful products & applications from any stage in your project. Questions or comments, email us at [email protected] Send us Fan Mail

What do you do when the database is maxed out, the busiest day of your year is six months away, and you still don't know what's actually wrong? Andrew Atkinson joins us to talk through that exact scenario at Aura Frames - the Christmas Day 2024 outage that set it off, and how they made Christmas Day 2025 a success.  LINKS - Andrew's Book - Andrew's Newsletter  - Scaling Rails at Aura Frames: Splitting to 8 Primary DBs and Reaching #1 in the App Store - From Christmas Outage to #1 App Store Ranking: An Aura Frames Postgres Scaling Retrospective - Rails at Scale - Postgres Summit US - You can't spell Shard without the word Hard - Open Positions at Aura Frames - Ryan's Website - Brendan's X/Twitter - Brendan's Bluesky --Sponsor-- This episode is brought to you by Flagrant.  Your partners for delivering thoughtful products & applications from any stage in your project. Questions or comments, email us at [email protected] Send us Fan Mail

No guest this week — just Brendan and Ryan working through several things they've been seeing lately. Topics covered include:   - Anthropic's skills: why both of us started by writing one giant skill instead of small composable ones, and why that's the same lesson object-oriented programming taught us years ago.   - Where skills end and agents begin — plus a surprise from Brendan's code review setup, where the sub-agents it spun up weren't using the skill at all.   - Ryan's spam war at Locable: 2,000 fake accounts before breakfast, 60,000 businesses stuck waiting on human review, and whether an LLM should get a vote on what's legitimate.   - Why the real blocker isn't the skill — it's the APIs, MCPs, and evaluation systems underneath it that nobody talks about.   - And the PR backlog problem: AI gets you 90% there in an hour, the last 10% is as hard as it ever was, and Intercom and Shopify keep their pull requests under 200 lines for a reason. LINKS Anthropic Developers Skill Usage VideoIntercom 2x Shipping Blog PostRyan's WebsiteBrendan's X/TwitterBrendan's Bluesky--Sponsor-- This episode is brought to you by Flagrant.  Your partners for delivering thoughtful products & applications from any stage in your project.  Book an hour with Flagrant at beflagrant.com/call Questions or comments, email us at [email protected] Send us Fan Mail

Jesse Hanley joined us from southern Japan, where he runs Bento — an email marketing and transactional email platform — as a company of one. Topics covered include: Why the bootstrapped dream now means picking big, hairy, competitive markets instead of cozy niches AI can replicate overnight.Automating entire roles with agentic "employees" — Cursor Cloud Agents and Grok Bot wired into MCPs for support, compliance, infra, finance and dev.Why most jobs are really just cron jobs, and how far one person can go if they build the tools deep enough.Plus Heroku scale-to-zero, moving Postgres off to PlanetScale, and why he's eating his words on agents replacing labor.LINKS - Bento - Tatami - Ryan's Website - Brendan's X/Twitter - Brendan's Bluesky --Sponsor-- This episode is brought to you by Flagrant.  Your partners for delivering thoughtful products & applications from any stage in your project. Questions or comments, email us at [email protected] Send us Fan Mail

Jim Remsik — founder of Flagrant, Madison Ruby and the traveling XO Ruby conferences — joins us for a wide-ranging conversation.  The discussion starts with the ups and downs of running a design-and-dev agency in the AI era.  Topics covered include: - Why design has started outselling development at Flagrant. - Why accessibility and UX are the parts people forget, and how Flagrant's hiring process mirrors real work to surface the thing that matters most: communication. -  Plus the story of XO Ruby — small, one-day, city-to-city conferences built to make community accessible again. LINKS - Flagrant - XO Ruby - Ryan's Website - Brendan's X/Twitter - Brendan's Bluesky Questions or comments, email us at [email protected] Send us Fan Mail

Nate Berkopec (Speedshop) returns to dig into what AI actually changes about Rails performance work — and it's not what the hype says. The through-line: stop conflating understanding code with verifying it, because the real leverage is building objective, tool-callable checks an agent can loop against — N+1s, characterization tests, jemalloc — instead of shipping more unreviewed slop. Nate makes the case that the future looks like Intercom's "software factory" (tiny, automatically-verified PRs, most merged with no human review) and asks why the rest of us are still hand-building 4,000-line monstrosities. Plus: why "intelligence" is the wrong word for what these models do, and a first look at Thread Pilot, his new automatic thread-pool tuner for Sidekiq and Puma. LINKS - Speedshop - Nate's X/Twitter - Threadpilot - The Complete Guide to Rails Performance Book - Sidekiq in Practice Book - On Rails Episode with Brian Scanlan from Intercom - Ryan's Website - Brendan's X/Twitter - Brendan's Bluesky Questions or comments, email us at [email protected] Send us Fan Mail

Ryan Castillo returns to talk about pivoting Knowatoa from an SEO play into an AI-visibility tool — and why the analytics everyone wants to track are becoming impossible to trust in an AI-search world. The back half turns into a deep dive on Ryan's AI coding workflow: skipping the Claude chat interface entirely in favor of firing off cloud agents from Cursor, letting them run unsupervised, and reviewing PRs cold instead of living in the conversation. Plus: why "throw away the code, not the plan" beats hand-holding an agent through every step, and why the AI labs have zero incentive to ever let you leave the chat. Links: - Knowatoa - Ryan Castillo's X/Twitter - Ryan Castillo's LinkedIn - Ryan's Website - Brendan's X/Twitter - Brendan's Bluesky Questions or comments, email us at [email protected] Send us Fan Mail

Ernesto Tagwerker (FastRuby.io / OmbuLabs) returns to talk through how AI is reshaping both sides of his business — speeding up Rails upgrades while simultaneously eating into revenue, and opening a new lane in AI strategy consulting for non-technical businesses. The group digs into the messiness of AI-generated tests, mutation testing, and how to know when your tests are actually testing anything.   01:00 FastRuby's Open Source Claude Skill for Rails Upgrades   03:30 How AI Has Eroded (and Grown) FastRuby's Revenue   07:00 Engineering as Marketing — Why They Open Sourced the Playbook   10:00 The Tooling Isn't the Problem — Engineering Culture Is   12:30 Using Claude to Write Contract Tests and Improve Coverage   15:30 The Problem with AI-Generated Tests   17:00 Mutation Testing Explained   19:00 Classicist vs. Mockist — Where Claude Gets It Wrong   23:00 Playwright for Acceptance Testing in the Development Loop   26:00 Who Watches the Watcher?   28:00 Staff Augmentation and AI Strategy at OmbuLabs   31:00 Working with Non-Technical Businesses in Philadelphia   33:30 Engagement Sizes — AI Discovery vs. Rails Upgrade Projects   35:30 CRM Summaries and One-on-One Prep with AI   38:30 Observability and Guardrails — How Do You Know It's Working?   43:00 LLM as Judge   45:00 Event Scraping — AI Makes Scrapers More Maintainable   50:00 Ryan's Universal Scraper — Using AI to Heal, Not Replace LINKS - Ernesto's LinkedIn - Ernesto's Bluesky - FastRuby.io - OmbuLabs - Ryan's Website - Brendan's X/Twitter - Brendan's Bluesky Send us Fan Mail

Colleen Schnettler and Joe Masilotti (Permission Not Required podcast) join Ryan and Brendan to catch up on what they're each building. Joe walks through Ruby Native — his platform for getting Rails apps into the App Store without touching Xcode or writing native code — and how AI has changed his development process. Colleen shares what AI automation consulting actually looks like in practice: more process mapping and integrations work than pure AI, and why developer credibility matters in a crowded market. The group also compares notes on how they're each using AI beyond coding — for business context, client management, and personal workflows.   00:00 Introductions   01:00 Ruby Native — Rails to the App Store Without Xcode   05:30 What Changes When You're the Only One Reading the Code   08:00 AI Automation Consulting in a Crowded Market   13:00 Beyond Content and Sales — Where AI Actually Fits   16:00 Cowork, Skills Repos, and Dropping OpenClaw   18:00 Joe's Three-Agent Coding Workflow   22:00 Projects You'd Never Have Tackled Before AI   24:30 Ruby Native vs Hotwire Native Explained   28:00 How the Preview Workflow Works   33:30 Leveraging Existing Networks for New Businesses   41:00 When Automation Doesn't Need AI   44:00 The Command Center and Second Brain Thread   49:00 Joe's Business Context in Claude — Powerful and Dystopian   51:30 Colleen's Personal Agents (School Emails, LinkedIn Pipeline)   54:30 Where to Store Context — Markdown, SQLite, and Avoiding Beads   56:00 Joe at RubyConf in July LINKS - Permission Not Required Podcast - Colleen's LinkedIn - Colleen's Email: [email protected] - Joe's Website - Ryan's Website - Brendan's X/Twitter - Brendan's Bluesky Questions or comments, email us at [email protected] Send us Fan Mail

Ryan and Brendan talk through the growing pains of AI-assisted development — including fatigue, increased confidence in bigger code changes, and what happens when you stop paying for expensive APM tools and just build your own. Ryan walks through how he used Claude to identify memory pressure, fix N+1 queries, and cut his Heroku costs significantly in just a few days. They also dig into the real tradeoffs: maintenance burden, over-optimization, and why you still need to understand what Claude is telling you before you run anything on a live database. LINKS - Ryan's Website - Brendan's X/Twitter - Brendan's Bluesky Questions or comments, email us at [email protected] Send us Fan Mail

Scott Werner (Sublayer) returns to discuss how rapidly AI and agentic coding have is changing.  The hosts and Scott dig into why niche tools are increasingly getting replicated by developers and hobbyists with "good enough" custom solutions — while complex enterprise platforms may actually have more staying power. Scott shares what he's seeing at the Artificial Ruby meetups. They also cover Stripe's "forward deployed" AI role, the reality of AI consulting, growing trust in AI-written code, and orchestration tools like Fabro for defining repeatable AI workflows. 01:03 Early Agentic Coding Days 04:49 SaaS Is Dead Debate 10:28 Enterprise vs Homegrown Systems 12:52 Forward Deployed Builders 15:20 Architects Still Matter 19:33 Personal Software vs Production 23:22 Stripe Forward Deployed AI Role 26:16 AI Adoption and Consulting Window 29:42 Games and What Software Becomes 33:20 Burnout and Pairing Lessons 36:06 Learning to Trust AI Output 38:57 Requirements Over Code Style 43:02 Multi Project AI Workflow 45:36 Software Factory Orchestration 54:40 Process Thinking and QA 56:41 Skills and Non Determinism LINKS - Sublayer Website - Scott's Blog (Works on My Machine) - Ryan's Website - Brendan's X/Twitter - Brendan's Bluesky Questions or comments, email us at [email protected] Send us Fan Mail

The hosts explore whether “data is the new moat” in SaaS and argues that data alone—especially customer data—is rarely defensible as extraction and migration get easier. Instead, moats increasingly come from clear product vision, differentiated approaches, integrated systems, and how well apps enable AI and humans to interact with structured data. They contrast niche SaaS with broad platforms like HubSpot and Salesforce, discuss pricing model changes driven by AI costs (moving beyond per-seat to metered/credits), and predict reduced reliance on traditional UIs as chat and CLIs become efficient interfaces for AI-to-backend communication. 00:00 Data as a Moat 01:52 Niche vs Platform SaaS 02:45 Integrations and UX Moats 05:31 AI Changes Pricing Models 06:48 Geocoding Data Example 08:35 When Not to Use AI 10:43 Why CLIs Are Rising 14:25 Future Without Interfaces 18:43 Data Product vs Customer Data 21:28 Opinionated SaaS Wins 23:19 AI Change And Strategy 23:48 Defensibility And Platform Risk 25:19 Building A Command Center 27:30 Top Tools In The Stack 27:52 Do You Still Need UIs 30:36 Second Brain For Priorities 33:37 Frameworks And Memory Systems 36:02 SaaS Moats In An AI World 39:23 AI Beyond Tech Businesses 41:35 Business Takeaways And Wrap LINKS Ryan's WebsiteBrendan's X/TwitterBrendan's BlueskyQuestions or comments, email us at [email protected] Send us Fan Mail

The hosts once again discuss the recurring theme of AI’s impact on development workflows.  They discuss various topics, including:  Increased PR volume from AI-assisted coding and whether traditional pull request reviews are still necessary. Should AI be used earlier for pre-PR review and stronger CI guardrails for performance and security. What is the role of automated testing, and are they even more important as code generation accelerates?01:05 PR Reviews Under AI Load 02:38 What PR Review Is For 05:02 Human Review What Remains 08:36 AI Pre Review And PR Purpose 11:01 Guardrails CI Performance Security 12:39 TDD Tests As Behavior Spec 15:53 AI Versus Automation In Pipeline 19:17 Testing Evolution Unit Vs System 20:32 Feature Specs And Functional Review 21:35 Bugs vs Defects Focus 23:37 Smoke Tests for Upgrades 24:44 Controller Tests Debate 27:40 Test Pyramid and Frontend Gap 28:37 Refactoring for Unit Tests 30:57 AI Coding Raises Review Stakes 34:00 Claude MD Friction 35:54 Wrap Up and Testing Habit LINKS Justin Searls PodcastWorking Effectively with Legacy Code Book by Michael FeathersProfessional Rails Testing: Tools and Principles Book by Jason SwettRyan's WebsiteBrendan's X/TwitterBrendan's BlueskyQuestions or comments, email us at [email protected] Send us Fan Mail

In this episode, the hosts discuss building a “universal scraper” for event calendars and a new AI-assisted workflow using a long-running orchestrator.md thread. 00:12 Why Change AI Workflow 01:29 Orchestrator File Setup 04:36 How Memory Persists 07:33 Platform Constraints WSL 08:45 Git Worktrees and Isolation 12:07 Scraper Build Approach 18:26 Incremental TDD Development 20:17 Making It Truly Universal 22:39 Universal Scraper Explained 26:03 Wrap Up and Next Steps LINKS - Ryan's Website - Brendan's X/Twitter - Brendan's Bluesky Questions or comments, email us at [email protected] Send us Fan Mail

The hosts discuss how AI-assisted coding has massively increased their output, creating a new bottleneck: cognitive load, PR review, testing, and getting work shipped. Ryan discusses splitting time between finishing near-complete work, advancing a few large architectural initiatives, and handling ongoing support.  Brendan talks about his productivity system using Claude to manage his time using local markdown files to help stay on top of things. They also cover risks of AI automation, permission scoping, subagent/approval bugs, and conclude with a renewed optimism that AI raises abstraction, increases competition, and pushes SaaS to adapt via execution, moats, and AI-ready APIs. 00:27 AI Code Volume 02:17 Cognitive Load Shift 04:52 PR Buckets Strategy 07:22 Overwhelmed Yet Excited 10:36 Workflow Tools Check 11:51 Claude Productivity Setup 14:02 Second Brain In Practice 17:21 Simple Local Files 19:30 Automation Limits 22:13 Scheduled Script Automation 23:00 Claude Cowork vs Command Center 23:39 API Permissions and Safety 26:12 Claude Code Approval Friction 29:25 Subagents and Parallel Work 30:44 When Agents Pretend Work 34:34 AI Shifts SaaS Thinking LINKS - Ryan's Website - Brendan's X/Twitter - Brendan's Bluesky Questions or comments, email us at [email protected] Send us Fan Mail