Can Rails Become a Superpower for Agentic Engineering?
A senior-level conversation about how modern product and engineering teams are actually using AI inside real Ruby and Rails codebases.
SPEAKERS:
Cody Watters — CTO & Co-Founder of Riveter (YC-backed) & former Staff Eng at Gusto
Colleen Schnettler Head of AI & Ruby expert
Ken Kantzer — CTO & Co-Founder of Truss, former VP of Eng at FiscalNote
Jordan Treviño — CTO of SimpleDocs & Founder of Telos Labs
Rails has long optimized for developer happiness and speed. AI introduces a new abstraction layer which accelerates drafting, refactoring, and exploration across mature monoliths and service-oriented systems alike.
This session reframes “vibe coding” from hype into an intent-driven execution model. AI can scaffold controllers, suggest service objects, generate RSpec tests, and refactor legacy code. Humans, however, remain accountable for architecture, domain modeling, data integrity, and long-term system clarity.
Through real examples and practitioner perspectives, we will explore:
Where AI meaningfully increases velocity in Rails workflows
Where it quietly introduces fragility (callbacks, metaprogramming, auth logic, background jobs)
How Rails conventions amplify (or constrain) AI effectiveness
What guardrails make AI-assisted development production-safe, especially in fintech
How the Rails engineering inner loop evolves: intent → AI draft → human review → test rigor → ship
Ruby is expressive and opinionated.
AI thrives in structured environments; however, it also exposes weak boundaries.
This is not a tool demo. It’s a conversation about standards, taste, and responsibility in a Rails-first world.
Powered by: Telos Labs