Talks & Sessions
Watch recordings from SF Ruby Conference and monthly meetups. Learn from the best in the Ruby community.
SF Ruby Conference 2025 - Keynotes
Herb to ReActionView: A New Foundation for the View Layer
Marco Roth
Independent
This talk is the conclusion of a journey I’ve been sharing throughout 2025. At RubyKaigi, I introduced Herb: a new HTML-aware ERB parser and tooling ecosystem. At RailsConf, I released developer tools built on Herb, including a formatter, linter, and language server, alongside a vision for modernizing and improving the Rails view layer.
RubyLLM: One API, One Person, One Machine for AI
Carmine Paolino
Chat with Work
The Merchants of Complexity have sold the AI world a lie. You need their frameworks. Their SDKs. Their enterprise architectures. Bullshit. AI today is just API calls. That's it. And when the game becomes building products instead of training models, complexity is death and simplicity is everything. Rails proved it. RubyLLM: one API for every model, every vendor. One developer on one machine serving thousands. While Python developers debug their 14-line "Hello World," we're shipping. Ruby's time in AI isn't coming - it's here.
Rails X
Vladimir (Vova) Dementyev
Evil Martians
The mysterious Rails X. Stay tuned!
Recording coming soon
Ruby & AI conversation
Obie Fernandez
Kickass Consulting
A conversation about the intersection of Ruby and AI technologies, exploring opportunities and challenges.
Conference Talks
Play with your code
Rachael Wright-Munn
Why are programming games more fun than our day jobs? We're going to dig into this exact question and see what lessons we can learn from them, and how we can bring it back to our developer experience. Also, we're going to talk about some rad programming games you should play!
Master the Rails Asset Pipeline: Best Practices for Apps & Gems
Adrian Marin
I toyed around with asset handling a lot in the last 4 years. I started in the pre-webpacker era, and came all the way to importmaps, esbuild and vite. I ship a gem (Avo), which is used in hundreds of different applications with different asset pipeline configurations, and use several techniques to ship my assets. Now I'm developing a plugin system and have hit all the roadblocks I can hit and have a better understanding of how things work.
ZJIT: The Future of Ruby Performance
Takashi Kokubun
Since Rails 7.2 enabled YJIT by default, it has been widely adopted by the Ruby community, delivering a 10-20% speedup in various production workloads. To enhance Ruby's speed even further, we're developing the next generation of YJIT for Ruby 3.5: ZJIT. In this talk, we'll delve into the exciting future of Ruby performance that ZJIT will unlock.
Real-time collaboration with Rails, AnyCable and Yjs
JP Camara
Real-time collaboration is a powerful tool for web apps, but difficult to implement. Most Ruby developers lack CRDT exposure and collaborative software challenges like conflict resolution and distributed consistency. This talk shows how to leverage Rails while adding sophisticated collaborative features using AnyCable to boost ActionCable performance and Yjs to simplify collaborative editing. I've specifically been implementing this approach in a production Rails setting, giving me a solid perspective on the challenges involved.
Start Writing Ruby (Stop Using Classes)
Dave Thomas
We are writing our Ruby code wrongly. We're using classes as the unit of design; we needn't, and we shouldn't. We use design patterns as recipes; they're largely irrelevant. We come up with arcane project structures and convoluted deployment systems; we needn't. For the last half-decade, I've been writing Ruby very differently to my previous style. Almost no classes. Creating structure as it grows, rather than before I start. Drastically cutting down dependencies. The result: my code seems drastically easier to write, maintain, and reuse. I'd like the opportunity the spread the word.
From code to customers: technical marketing for people who'd rather be building
Colleen Schnettler
Too many brilliant Rails developers build great products and then quit when customers don't appear. They're missing one skill: marketing. I want to change that. The Rails renaissance is here (huge thanks to Evil Martians!), and I believe helping Rails builders become successful entrepreneurs is crucial for our community's future. This might be the conference's most impactful talk. Why me? I'm a technical founder who's built three startups and now coach technical founders on marketing. I've lived this journey and help others navigate it daily.
The Thin CLIent Approach
Jeremy Evans
This presentation will discuss a novel approach to CLI development, where the command line arguments are passed to an endpoint instead of being parsed by the client program, and the advantages and disadvantages doing so. It will discuss the development of a new command line argument parsing library, cross compiling client line programs, and how this approach enabled usage of the CLI without installation, by integrating support for it into a web application.
The Role of Software Design in an AI World
Sarah Mei
Ruby devs, like all devs, are nervous about their worth in an AI world. This talk gives them reason to be optimistic, & will start to open for them a vista in which they are enhanced by AI rather than being replaced. For 10+ years I've spoken, written, & thought deeply about software design. For the last 6 months I've worked with code assistants to see what they can do in real Rails codebases - not new projects or toy apps. I've got some initial conclusions that are worth sharing widely.
Sidekiq: Open Source, Business and the Future
Mike Perham
Learn how to build a successful open source business model from the creator of Sidekiq.
Pack It Up: Why Packwerk Can’t Save Your Messy Rails App (But You Can)
Stephan Hagemann
Packwerk promised modularity in a gem install — but good architecture doesn’t come from `bundle add`. We’ll look at how Packwerk’s story reflects deeper truths about software design, organizational habits, and how we sometimes ask our tools to do our growing for us. This is a call to arms (and to our love of the craft) for teams that want to scale Rails applications by scaling their understanding first.
Navigating programming language evolution in the AI era
José Valim
As AI becomes increasingly integrated into software development, we find ourselves facing questions about how our programming languages and tools should evolve - questions that don't yet have clear answers. Rather than prescribing solutions, this talk explores the open questions and possible directions that developers and tooling authors should be grappling with.
Scaling Rails to two million MySQL requests per second
Eugene Kenny
I whistle stop tour of various patterns and techniques Intercom's monolith used to go from rails new intercom to comfortably scaling to over two million MySQL requests per second. Expect practical takeaways on replication, sharding, caching, connection routing, and upgrade strategy, plus the bumps and trade‑offs we hit along the way.
Thank You
Irina Nazarova
Thank you for joining the SF Ruby!
Recording coming soon
How to open-source your Rails startup
Sam Poder
As Rails developers, we develop on the shoulders of giants. We can do what we can do because of the work of thousands of open source contributors; I want to encourage more developers to give back through open sourcing their work. This also isn't a subject talked about often and having just taken a codebase from open to closed source, I can offer a unique perspective. I remember struggling with a lack of resources of the subject when we started the project. Hopefully this talk can make it easier for the next person who open sources their codebase.
Recording coming soon
Derailing Our Application: How and Why We Are Decoupling Our Code from Rails
Fito von Zastrow, Alan Ridlehoover
Successful Rails apps tend to become massive monoliths over time. Our's is no exception. Our team is over 1000 engineers. Our codebase is over 4 million lines of Ruby. But, Rails doesn't tell you how to manage that many developers working on that large a codebase. So, we're encouraging modularization and boundaries within our codebase. Our approach is lightweight and actually producing results. We're the right ones to talk about this because we're the one's issuing the guidance internally.
Recording coming soon
Rails Expertise, Distilled: AI Agents That Get Your Monolith
Brandon Weaver
New developers face months of unproductive confusion when dropped into massive codebases they can't navigate or understand. What if they could get instant answers about how systems work, identify what code needs changing, and understand complex business logic without waiting for help? This talk demonstrates how Rails' built-in introspection transforms into expert AI tools that understand your specific codebase, making institutional knowledge accessible 24/7. Instead of 3-month ramp-ups, developers contribute meaningfully in days while the entire team stays productive.
Recording coming soon
Performance starts at boot
Ben Sheldon
Everyone can better understand how their Ruby code performs, regardless of whether they're using Rails or Hanami or just scripting with Ruby. As applications grow, I frequently see inside-out application performance work ignored or unacceptably tolerated ("that's just the way it is [sigh]").
Recording coming soon
Peace, Love, and CRUD: Finding Calm in the Chaos—With Ruby, AI, and a Little Garden Magic
Tia Anderson
This talk matters because we are enduring death by a thousand quiet cuts. The world asks us to go faster while our spirits beg us to slow down. Emotional exhaustion has become the norm, but it doesn't have to be. I built Peace of Mind not just with Rails, but with urgency and heart. As a newer dev and RailsConf Scholar, I've lived the tension between burnout and beauty. Choosing peace...in our work, our lives, and our code creates ripples. It starts with one. One you. One me.
Recording coming soon
AI Interface in 5 Minutes - Model Context Protocol on Rails
Paweł Strzałkowski
This talk delivers a low-risk, high-value AI strategy that applies to any Rails app, new or old. It proves the ecosystem's power to modernize existing assets in the AI era without the need for expensive rewrites. It teaches one of the key aspects of the modern AI tech stack, giving a competitive advantage. I'm a CTO, a veteran Rails developer and a vetted conference speaker. My expertise on a similar topic is validated by my upcoming talks at Rails World and EuRuKo this year. I'm excited to bring this timely material to the US community
Recording coming soon
The MCP Fog Made Me Do It: A Ruby Inspector's Unexpected Journey
Enrique Carlos Mogollán
MCP is still pretty foggy for most developers, and Ruby shouldn't be left out of the AI tooling party. This story shows how a simple "let me figure this out" project can accidentally become something fun and interesting to share. I've been learning about MCP, from the official ruby SDK, and stumbled onto this idea of self-generating UI interfaces. If you've ever stared a new project and wondered "how do I even start?", this talk is one example from foggy confusion to sunshine moment of "holy smokes, I didn't know that was possible." Besides, Ruby deserves a seat at the AI table.
Recording coming soon
Building Cloud Data Infrastructure with Ruby
Evgeny Li
Ruby isn't just for web development. Discover why Ruby is a great choice for building and automating modern cloud data infrastructure. Learn real-world lessons from Bemi AI, an agentic data platform. You'll gain practical skills and be inspired to leverage Ruby for your next infrastructure project!
Recording coming soon
Fireside chat with the co-founder and CTO of bolt.new Albert Pai
Albert Pai, Irina Nazarova
Irina Nazarova sits down with Albert Pai, Co-founder and CTO of Bolt.new, to talk about building one of the fastest-growing startups in code generation—what worked, what didn’t, and how Ruby and Rails shaped the path.
Recording coming soon
Operating rails: what about after you deploy?
André Arko
Running a web service requires you to do so many things that aren't included in any programming books or tutorials. We need more developers able to ship services that work, rather than expecting each developer to figure out the entire list by trial and error, one at a time, by themselves. Blog posts with individual tips about isolated problems don't cut it either, because no one is creating a field survey or a checklist of the overall process and making sure developers are aware of and ready for what they'll face in production.
Recording coming soon
Hack Day at AngelList
Join us for a full-day Hack Day at AngelList - doors open from 9am, official Hack Day from 10 am to 4pm! Work on Ruby projects, collaborate with fellow Rubyists, and build something amazing. Whether you're working on open source contributions, personal projects, or just want to learn from others, this is the perfect opportunity to code together. All skill levels welcome!
Startup Demos
Bolt.new Demo
Alex Kalderimis, Albert Pai
AI-native browser tool for building and deploying full-stack web apps with zero code. Launched 2024; $40M ARR in 5 months.
Stepful Demo
Wyatt Ades
Online healthcare training for entry-level roles in four months. Tech-driven, accessible to those with a high school diploma.
NexHealth Demo
Matt Duszynski
Accelerating innovation in healthcare with our universal API, powered by the Synchronizer. Used by tens of thousands of practices in North America, and hundreds of startups building with us. We're a healthtech unicorn!
Simple AI Demo
Zach Kamran
Simple AI makes it easy to build and deploy enterprise-grade phone agents in days, not weeks. Iconic businesses use us for sales calls, customer support, leads qualification, and more. YC-backed.
Sixfold Demo
Brian Moseley
Insurtech startup that utilizes generative AI to optimize insurance underwriting processes.
Cactus Demo
Avinash Joshi
AI-powered business assistant that answers, qualifies, and follows up with every lead around the clock—so you never miss a customer, call, or opportunity.
Superconductor Demo
Arjun Singh
Superconductor lets you run many coding agents in parallel, with a live browser preview for each one, on desktop or mobile. Launch many agents for each ticket to boost your productivity.
AI Squared Demo
Nagendra Hassan Dhanakeerthi
Open-source reverse ETL platform to activate warehouse data into SaaS apps. One-click self-hosting, customizable connectors, and built for modern data teams.
Recognize Demo
Peter Philips
Employee recognition and rewards program that is high-impact, affordable, and easy to launch. Even for frontline teams across multiple locations.
Fin by Intercom Demo
Ryan Sherlock
See Fin, Intercom's AI support agent, resolve customer questions with human-quality answers across chat, email, voice, and social. Learns from your docs and policies while keeping your tone. We'll demo the Fin AI Engine: intent clarification, knowledge retrieval, and response validation to reduce hallucinations. Quick setup, precise control with Guidance and Workflows, and seamless integrations.
Ubicloud Demo
Dan Farina
Open source alternative to AWS. Ubicloud provides cloud services on bare metal providers, such as Hetzner, Leaseweb, or AWS Bare Metal.
Thatch Demo
Bart de Water
Thatch makes it easy to give your team great healthcare. You set a budget, and your employees spend it the way that works best for them.
AngelList Demo
Chamod Gamage
AngelList builds the software investors use to fund world-changing startups.
Finta Demo
Andy Wang
Finta is the new default for startups to handle accounting and taxes. Within 10 minutes, you get automated bookkeeping, effortless tax filing, and real‑time insights.
PlanetScale Demo
Sam Lambert
The database platform for developers. PlanetScale provides MySQL-compatible serverless database with built-in scaling, branching, and non-blocking schema changes.
Recording coming soon
AccessGrid Demo
Auston Bunsen
API for issuing NFC keys for Apple and Google Wallet for startups, access control integrators, and large enterprises.
Recording coming soon
Suppli Demo
David Paluy
Suppli provides digital payments and accounts receivable (AR) software solutions for construction materials supply and distribution sector.
Recording coming soon
Tend Cash Demo
James Kerr
Tend is for people with full lives who need clear visibility of their finances without the burden of traditional budgeting.
Recording coming soon
Spinel Demo
André Arko
Spinel offers retainers to multiply the productivity of your team, and makes next-generation developer tools for everyone. Use rv.dev to install Ruby in 1 second flat, and never worry about OpenSSL breaking Ruby again.
Recording coming soon
Cora Computer Demo
Kieran Klaassen
AI-powered email agent that triages, drafts, and responds to messages autonomously, letting you manage your inbox with minimal effort.
Recording coming soon
Terminalwire Demo
Brad Gessler
Developer tool for building and deploying modern, web-integrated command-line interfaces: Terminalwire streams server-side commands to users' terminals with seamless cross-platform support, authentication, and instant updates.
Recording coming soon
Chatwithwork Demo
Carmine Paolino
Finally, a way to find that thing buried in your work accounts, and to write more with what you find. Pulls context from Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Calendar, and Presentations to draft emails and documents. Built with Rails 8, RubyLLM and the Async stack.
Recording coming soon
llamapress Demo
Kody Kendall
AI-powered content platform built with Ruby on Rails.
Recording coming soon
Cleary Demo
Ryan O'Donnell
AI-powered HR platform transforming how companies support and engage their employees. Cleary helps HR teams resolve up to 40% of HR tickets instantly.
Recording coming soon
Bemi AI Demo
Evgeny Li
Platform for building AI agents that handle customer requests 24/7 via email and SMS. Bemi AI saves hours of manual work with agents that help diagnose, resolve, and respond automatically.
Recording coming soon
Temporal Demo
Tom Wheeler
Demo of Temporal - the open source platform for building reliable distributed systems using durable execution. Learn how Temporal helps developers build resilient applications that can survive failures and ensure critical workflows complete successfully.
Workshops
Building Agents with Rails
Justin Bowen
Hands-on workshop for building AI agents using Rails framework and modern AI tools.
Inertia Rails Workshop
Brandon Shar, Svyatoslav (Svyat) Kryukov, Brian Knoles
Inertia.js solves a huge pain point for server side MVC frameworks: clean integration with rich client-side libraries like React, Vue, and Svelte. Inertia Rails allows both sides of this equation to shine. The Rails code looks almost exactly like vanilla Rails code (without the view layer), which keeps existing Rails teams productive. On the client, Inertia Rails takes away a lot of the headaches in gluing React and Rails together: session based auth, server side global state management, and Inertia form submissions make life much easier on teams.
Upskill Your Team by Diving into Rails itself & other Gems
Kasper Timm Hansen
There's a ton of untapped potential in Rails and other gem source for upskilling that teams aren't leveraging because they don't know how. And there's almost no content showing how. This problem hurts Ruby open source, because teams don't know how to contribute or make gems (exposure to real open source code is the first step IMO). I've given several Rails source deep-dive workshops over Zoom that 70+ people have attended. I've shown a live-demo of this on stage at RailsConf that attendees raved about.
The Dynamic Ruby Toolkit
Noel Rappin
Ruby rewards thinking about types with a dynamic mindset instead of a static one. In this workshop, we’ll show how use Ruby’s dynamism to your advantage. From the humble comment to runtime type checking, from tests to debugging techniques, from data management to true object-oriented design, this workshop will give you the tools you need to bring out Ruby’s full power.
Meetup Talks
Watch on Ruby Events
Recordings from our monthly SF Ruby meetups are available on Ruby Events, the community platform for Ruby conference and meetup videos.
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