Field notes from shipping Rails SaaS with AI inside.https://taywind.com/en-UShttps://taywind.com/en/blog/stripe-billing-in-a-rails-saas-mvp-the-minimum-viable-schema/https://taywind.com/en/blog/stripe-billing-in-a-rails-saas-mvp-the-minimum-viable-schema/Store Stripe IDs and mirrored status, never derive money locally — the moment you add a price_cents column, you're reconciling two ledgers that disagree.Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTstriperailssaas billingsubscriptionsmvphttps://taywind.com/en/blog/solid-queue-in-rails-8-production-ditching-redis-on-a-one-box-deploy/https://taywind.com/en/blog/solid-queue-in-rails-8-production-ditching-redis-on-a-one-box-deploy/Rails 8 ships Solid Queue as the default job backend. My rubric for dropping Sidekiq and Redis on one box: one Postgres, one supervisor, FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED.Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTsolid-queuerails 8background jobsactive jobsidekiqhttps://taywind.com/en/blog/adding-semantic-search-to-a-rails-app-with-pgvector-in-one-weekend/https://taywind.com/en/blog/adding-semantic-search-to-a-rails-app-with-pgvector-in-one-weekend/Embeddings are just another column and the query is ORDER BY — no vector database, no SaaS. The chunking-and-dimensions decision that eats your Saturday if you skip it.Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTrailspgvectorsemantic searchpostgresembeddingshttps://taywind.com/en/blog/llm-routing-in-rails-openrouter-with-fallback-chains-and-budget-caps/https://taywind.com/en/blog/llm-routing-in-rails-openrouter-with-fallback-chains-and-budget-caps/Route LLM calls through OpenRouter with an ordered fallback chain and a spend gate — a service object and config file, no gem, with a tier-by-tier ordering rubric.Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTrailsopenrouterllmfallbackservice objectshttps://taywind.com/en/blog/zero-downtime-rails-migrations-four-moves-that-cover-90-of-cases/https://taywind.com/en/blog/zero-downtime-rails-migrations-four-moves-that-cover-90-of-cases/A locking-aware rubric for safe Rails schema changes, down to why ADD COLUMN with a constant default stopped rewriting the table in Postgres 11.Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTrailspostgresdatabase migrationszero-downtimedevopshttps://taywind.com/en/blog/rails-multi-tenancy-patterns-row-scoping-vs-schema-vs-database-per-tenant/https://taywind.com/en/blog/rails-multi-tenancy-patterns-row-scoping-vs-schema-vs-database-per-tenant/A rubric for picking row-scoped, schema-per-tenant, or database-per-tenant in Rails — and what each pattern costs you when a query forgets the fence.Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTrailsmulti-tenancypostgresarchitecturesaashttps://taywind.com/en/blog/kamal-vs-fly-io-vs-render-a-solo-rails-founder-s-rubric/https://taywind.com/en/blog/kamal-vs-fly-io-vs-render-a-solo-rails-founder-s-rubric/Five-axis scorecard for picking between Kamal, Fly.io, and Render when you're the only engineer running a Rails app, a DB, and a worker.Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTrailsdeploymentkamalfly.iorenderhttps://taywind.com/en/blog/devise-vs-rodauth-in-2026-picking-auth-for-a-new-rails-app/https://taywind.com/en/blog/devise-vs-rodauth-in-2026-picking-auth-for-a-new-rails-app/A five-axis rubric for choosing between Devise and Rodauth on a green-field Rails 8 SaaS — with the trade-offs you inherit on day 400.Thu, 21 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTrailsdeviserodauthauthenticationsaashttps://taywind.com/en/blog/hotwire-vs-react-for-a-b2b-saas-dashboard-a-rails-engineer-s-rubric/https://taywind.com/en/blog/hotwire-vs-react-for-a-b2b-saas-dashboard-a-rails-engineer-s-rubric/Five questions I score before picking Hotwire or a React SPA on a Rails API for a B2B SaaS dashboard — and the failure modes each one hides.Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThotwirereactrailsb2b saasarchitecturehttps://taywind.com/en/blog/sidekiq-vs-solid-queue-in-2026-when-to-switch-and-when-not-to/https://taywind.com/en/blog/sidekiq-vs-solid-queue-in-2026-when-to-switch-and-when-not-to/A four-question rubric for choosing between Sidekiq and Solid Queue in Rails 8, with one falsifiable line on where the switch pays off.Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTrailssidekiqsolid queuebackground jobsredishttps://taywind.com/en/blog/fixed-price-vs-hourly-software-development-the-mvp-math-nobody-shows/https://taywind.com/en/blog/fixed-price-vs-hourly-software-development-the-mvp-math-nobody-shows/Pricing model is a risk allocation choice, not a rate choice. Here's the variance rubric I run before quoting a SaaS MVP, with a worked example.Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpricingsaas mvpcontractingscoperiskhttps://taywind.com/en/blog/a-saas-discovery-call-agenda-that-actually-fits-in-30-minutes/https://taywind.com/en/blog/a-saas-discovery-call-agenda-that-actually-fits-in-30-minutes/Seven blocks, three to five minutes each, that replace the consulting-firm script with the agenda I run on solo founder calls.Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTdiscovery callsaasconsultingsolo engineersaleshttps://taywind.com/en/blog/atelier-redesign-and-workers-ai/https://taywind.com/en/blog/atelier-redesign-and-workers-ai/Tossing the glass-blur AI-purple aesthetic for an editorial typographic system, and swapping the chat backend to Cloudflare Workers AI in an afternoon.Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTdesignaiastrocloudflarehttps://taywind.com/en/blog/postgres-rag-with-pgvector-skip-pinecone-ship-on-one-box/https://taywind.com/en/blog/postgres-rag-with-pgvector-skip-pinecone-ship-on-one-box/How a single-box Rails setup with pgvector and ruby_llm replaced a managed vector DB — 180 lines, 50k chunks, three pitfalls.Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpgvectorragpostgresruby-llmrails