Mergeable by Default: Why AI Coding Needs a Context Engine, Not Just a Bigger Model
A practical engineering take on the AI Engineer talk 'Mergeable by default: Building the context engine to save time and tokens' — why useful AI...
Writing
Blog
Notes on engineering, Rails, AI-assisted development, and the systems I build.
Why Test Refactoring Matters: Turning 12-Minute Builds Into a 39-Second Proof Loop
A metric-based look at why profiling and refactoring Rails tests matters when you ship around 10 PRs a day, each with multiple commits, and every...
How I Turned AI Into a 5x Backend Force Multiplier as One Principal Engineer
How one principal backend engineer shipped 400+ PRs, built a zero-drift AI operating system, got a new engineer onto two top-priority tasks in 15 minutes,...
From Monolithic Seeds to Enterprise-Ready Data Generation: Building a Scalable Rails Seed System
A comprehensive guide to building an enterprise-grade database seeding system in Rails—from a 3,600-line monolith to a modular architecture supporting 100k+ full candidate avatars with...
From Zero-Gap to Zero-Drift: Making AI Follow Rails Rules (Frozen vs Strict)
A practical upgrade to the Zero-Gap framework: how we reduced AI rule drift using a single entry-point prompt, Hard-Fail rules, evidence-based audits, negative examples, and...
How to Start with Agentic Development: What to Know, What to Automate, and How to Use It
A senior-engineer playbook for agentic development: the mental model, the tooling vocabulary (AGENTS.md, Skills, MCP, RAG, LSP, Hooks), and a practical repo setup that increases...
From 5-Minute Timeouts to Sub-3-Minute Builds: A Complete Guide to Rails RSpec CI Optimization
A comprehensive guide to optimizing RSpec test suites for CI pipelines—covering parallel execution, factory optimization, file I/O elimination, pipeline architecture, and profiling strategies that cut...
Turning Neverlands Into Design Fuel: A Browser Bot + GPT-5.1 Game Analyst
How we built a Playwright + GPT-5.1 pipeline that logs into neverlands.ru, captures real game screens, and turns them into structured design insights for your...
From Rails Spaghetti to Structured Code: Integrating dry-rb into Your API
A comprehensive guide to integrating 11 dry-rb gems into your Ruby on Rails API—showing real before/after examples of how dry-types, dry-struct, dry-monads, dry-validation, dry-container, dry-matcher,...
From MySQL to PostgreSQL: A Practical Migration Guide for Rails APIs
A comprehensive guide to migrating your Rails application from MySQL to PostgreSQL—covering database-agnostic code patterns, the migration process, PostgreSQL's advanced features, and multi-schema architecture strategies....
Zero-Gap API Development: A Contract-First Framework for AI-Assisted Rails Engineering
A complete framework for shipping regression-free Rails APIs with AI assistants—combining contract-first development, systematic verification, and gap-free documentation.
Building a Browser-Based MMORPG with Ruby on Rails: Documentation-Driven Development with AI
A comprehensive guide to building a turn-based browser MMORPG using Ruby on Rails, Hotwire, and AI-assisted development. Learn how documentation-driven workflows, feature decomposition, and "inspired-by"...
From Theory to Production: Reliable WebSockets with Ruby on Rails, JWT & ActionCable
Step-by-step guide to building reliable, authenticated, and scalable WebSockets in Rails using ActionCable and JWT, with practical code examples and architecture patterns.
AI Will Make Your Team Slower—Unless a Senior Engineer Drives It
A practical control loop (with code) for turning Codex-style assistants into force multipliers—and why experience is non-negotiable.
One Source of Truth: Consolidating Our Rails API Contribution Guide for Cursor IDE
How we merged Rails, RSpec, and Ruby rules into a single, enforceable guide—and how to attach it to Cursor prompts for consistent, efficient results.
Containerizing Your Rails Development with Docker + Dev Containers
Zero-setup onboarding, reproducible environments, and fewer 'works on my machine' moments.
ACID in Rails PostgreSQL vs MongoDB - with Atomic Patterns
ACID in Rails PostgreSQL vs MongoDB with Atomic Patterns
A tiny Rails console banner that show app stats every time you run rails c
A tiny Rails console banner that show app stats every time you run rails c
Optimizing a Complex Rails Avatar Endpoint — my step‑by‑step notes
Optimizing a Complex Rails Avatar Endpoint
Rails 8: A Stable `/up` Health Endpoint with One Initializer (ENV‑driven)
A battle-tested, copy‑paste `/up` endpoint for Rails API apps—no autoloading traps, no brittle config. One initializer, ENV‑driven settings, optional DB/Redis checks, clear status semantics, and...
Mastering freeze_time in Rails Tests: Practical Patterns and Pitfalls
If your test suite ever fails “only sometimes,” there’s a good chance time is involved. Rails ships with the excellent ActiveSupport::Testing::TimeHelpers, giving you tools like...
Under-the-Hood Mechanisms of Ruby on Rails You Should Know
If you’re comfortable writing Rails apps but want to really understand what’s going on under the hood—and use that knowledge to make better technical decisions—this...
Deep Rails Instrumentation: ActiveSupport::Notifications & LogSubscriber (Rails 8+)
Practical, copy-paste-ready patterns for ActiveSupport::Notifications and ActiveSupport::LogSubscriber in Rails 8+.
Mastering ActiveSupport::LogSubscriber (Rails 8+): JSON logs, per-tenant routing, and production patterns
A practical, production-grade guide to ActiveSupport::LogSubscriber for Rails 8+: structured JSON logs, log tags, and per-tenant log routing.
Securing JWT Tokens in Rails API with Devise, Devise-JWT, and RSA Keys
Step-by-step guide to securing your Ruby on Rails API authentication using Devise, Devise-JWT, Doorkeeper-JWT, and RSA encryption keys.
From 401s to JWT Bliss: Debugging Devise‑JWT on a Rails 8 API‑only App
A step‑by‑step log of the dead‑ends and the final, tidy setup— complete with code snippets, failure‑app JSON errors, and cURL recipes.
Minimalism, Family, war and lessons
In 2014, I decided to move to Kyiv, Ukraine. I had a great opportunity to work on an interesting project that integrated with the UK...
Principles for Writing Maintainable Code
Applications always change. This post collects practical principles and Rails‑friendly patterns I use to keep code maintainable over the long run—leaning on Ruby on Rails...