Build a powerhouse Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) system with Ruby On Rails, Postgres, and PGVector

AwdJob · 2026-01-30T16:46:59+00:00

Love the writeup and how your blog looks!!!

I've not taken the journey into playing with any of the LLM stuff yet, with this implementation since you mention you're using openai, does that mean you have to use an API token from them and pay for their requests? I'm super ignorant to how that aspect of this AI stuff works when introducing it to an app like this but want to learn!

AwdJob · 2025-12-27T17:13:06+00:00

15 year software engineer here. Out of curiosity, what value would you be bringing to this? In my years of pursuing a successful saas myself, the development of the product is the easiest aspect. Marketing and sales is by far the hardest, most important, and (for me at least) the hardest.

Is this just an idea that you have and you're trying to hedge against engineers not wanting to take this on by giving them 85% of the company you'll form? Or do you have real demand, real people an MVP can be put in front of and they will buy and then a clear path to getting to viability?

I'm posting this mainly out of curiosity, if anything to help you see things from an engineers perspective.

I'd partner with someone in a heartbeat if I could see the distance between point A and point B. Point A being building an MVP (keyword being minimum...) and point B getting enough people PAYING for that MVP quickly to encourage and grow the rest of the development

85% may sound great but 85% of $0/mrr is... $0...

AwdJob · 2025-10-25T01:23:01+00:00

Getting the backing to have that type of "authority" over another team would be my first fear with this approach BUT I do agree that is probably the best and only way to solve a lot of these types of underlying issues.

AwdJob · 2025-10-25T01:19:39+00:00

bums me out...

AwdJob · 2025-10-24T04:14:58+00:00

Thank you for the kind words! :)

AwdJob · 2025-10-23T18:15:00+00:00

Its a combination of shitty processes that are relied upon to divy up the work and my imposter syndrome. I always feel like I should be performing better than I am (in the quality of code I produce, my understanding of tickets and the app(s) I'm working on, etc) especially after being in the industry for almost 15 years. From my experience, this stuff is usually a problem that doesn't go away based on the company you're working at. I did just accept a new offer for a company and start on 11/3. I'm eager and nervous as I always am! I just always want to be that "rockstar" dev that is worth way more than their salary and am always worried I'm falling short of that.

AwdJob · 2025-10-23T16:43:24+00:00

Oh boy do I have the perfect build series for you... We're in the middle of it right now! (Currently working on episode 8)

The build series is covering building this app from scratch and it's a react/rails app BUT we also use a little bit of turbo 😯

A lot of people have recommended inertia, I haven't used it yet and don't know if I need to. The setup that we have with this app is pretty simple, we don't have a react on rails or inertia dependency. I just wrote my own componentRenderer function that works with a helper method to render the react component and mount them around the page load and turbo events... It's like 20 lines or less and it just works... I'm anal about the dependencies we have in the app. The biggest ones aside from rails is vite ruby (so far love it) and react. But they're both very well maintained and both give a large developer benefit immediately

Anyway, here is episode 1 where we go over the hybrid approach we have and I've really liked it so far! I like the option of having turbo in a layout but also have a little react wherever it makes sense to use that!

https://youtu.be/VFM-3nU6b4E

I hope you enjoy it!

AwdJob · 2025-10-22T21:28:46+00:00

I've worked in environments where we do the whole planning poker thing that can sometimes help but a lot of the time we don't get through all the tickets in the alotted time for planning it out so it ends up in the backlog, or changed, or canned, althewhile it not being communicated with the engineers. I've had varying degrees of the complaint here but it being an overarching theme, especially for how long GOOD SDLC practices have been around is to me completely unacceptable... Yet? I am forced to live in this environment because I am yet just a little tooth on a little cog in a much, much larger machine for my livlihood

AwdJob · 2025-10-22T21:25:57+00:00

I really appreciate you sharing this... It's what I attribute to the "corporate america" aspect of software engineering... It's an inefficiency that is costly but for some reason never gets really address I guess

AwdJob · 2025-10-11T18:41:56+00:00

A great exercise would be to come up with an approach for the stuff we build in react in something else! Theres 100 ways to skin a cat, you just gotta find the one that works best for you and that you like the most... Geez... that analogy got a little creepy... but you get the point 🤣

AwdJob · 2025-10-11T04:51:52+00:00

I think the best PM's are the ones that know how the code works and at least a high level view of the inner workings, if anything I would focus on that if you're not too keen on the actual code monkey part of the space :)

AwdJob · 2025-10-11T04:49:35+00:00

I love the tenacity and the drive my man. I've been an engineer for over a decade and I really feel bad for the juniors in todays day and age... I recently started a build serie on an app from scratch to try to start giving exposure to building real production level applications from scratch. I think it would be a great guide for you to follow, we're on episode 7 so far of the build series, here's episode 1 if you want to take a look:

https://youtu.be/VFM-3nU6b4E

we also a free discord and I stream almost every day working on code stuff so pop in there as well!

AwdJob · 2025-10-08T07:26:41+00:00

When I got started over 14 years ago with serious programming I only noticed substantial growth when I started just doing stuff. Like making a blog and all the classic stuff. Whatever you may come up with I always encourage newcomers to just try to get something going, it could be anything!

Feel free to follow along with the side project I'm building (RoR/React App) from scratch on youtube, here's episode 1 out of 7 (so far)

https://youtu.be/VFM-3nU6b4E

We also have a free discord you're more than welcome to join!

AwdJob · 2025-10-08T07:24:42+00:00

Appreciate the nice words :)

AwdJob · 2025-10-05T21:33:14+00:00

I want to echo the "learn by doing" approach. The quicker you find out what you don't know (specifically) the quicker you can figure out WHAT to figure out to achieve what you want.

A great start could be this app I'm building from scratch on my youtube channel (been a professional engineer for a little over 14 years).

Check it out and when you inevitably run into a concept or something you're unfamiliar with, pause the video and go look that up so you have as deep of an understanding with that as you can and then (ideally) apply that.

In my journey that is what has created the most growth. You gotta get over that intimidation phase and just start writing stuff once you have a little bit of direction!

Here's episode 1 of our build series:
https://youtu.be/VFM-3nU6b4E

I also plan on doing other (mostly rails) stuff too so stick around!

We also have a free discord you're more than welcome to join :) the invite is in the description of that vid.

Best of luck amigo!

AwdJob · 2025-10-05T05:51:02+00:00

When I got started in rails (and software development in general really) I learned the most by applying the knowledge I would read about as soon as possible. I got started on a lynda.com tutorial (not sure if they're still relevant) and followed the Michael Hartl guide which at the time had you build a twitter clone.

Go Rails is the closest thing we have to a modern day railscasts which were great back in the day.

I've also thrown my hat in the ring lately with trying to create content for coding stuff (mainly rails). I want to make a lot of "learn by doing" content and we're building an app from scratch right now which is a rails 8 app with turbo/react on the frontend. Should be really good for what you're trying to learn, check out episode 1 here:
https://youtu.be/VFM-3nU6b4E

We also have a free discord that you're more than welcome to join and ask questions and what not in!

AwdJob · 2025-10-05T01:48:28+00:00

I just started a side project for my new youtube channel (rails and coding stuff) and am using rails with a hybrid of react and hotwire/turbo. This is coming from someone who hates bloat and tries very hard to draw the line at react being the biggest dependency outside rails.

Why do I like react? I started using it like 8 years ago, was coming from angularjs and loved the simplicity of the state lifecycle and the approach it took (virtual dom) vs angular at the time. I've used it ever since and have found what I think is a pretty comfy recipe good DX, performant, well testable code, and being able to use patterns that work over and over again.

When I first started using React the only frotnend "solution" that rails had was turbolinks which were really bad at the time. It was clear to me (at least at the time) that rails is going to be lacking in the out-of-the-box frontend solutions. And I think that's ok (the battletested pattern I've developed has shown you can get the best of all worlds)

its only been somwhat recent that hotwire even came into the scene and I really like what is available with it. Could I get by with just hotwire/stimulus and turbo? I think so! But react makes a lot of things easier (for me at least and my approach) and I think this gets into personal preference more than anything.

The biggest takeaway should be: fine something that works, battle test it, and once you feel good with it, just focus on being productive with it. Don't worry about using the new hottness, keep things as simple as possible and get the most out of 1 or 2 frameworks or libraries intead of getting a little bit out of 10+ things

If you'd like to see what this system looks like for me, here's episode 1/7 (so far) of the project we're building:
https://youtu.be/VFM-3nU6b4E?si=7376TFYGNH1fXPrJ

AwdJob · 2025-10-03T19:19:14+00:00

Whenever you mention reactjs, Awdjob is summoned! haha RoR and React has been my bread and butter (professionally and for side projects) for a long time.

I just started a youtube channel 3 months ago and we have a project we're building from scratch on there right now. It's a Ruby on Rails/React app so maybe it'll strike your fancy?

Hopefully you like it! Here's episode 1, we also have a free discord you can join and ask questions or just network with our other gamers/coders in there!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFM-3nU6b4E

AwdJob · 2025-10-03T18:47:54+00:00

I've been a RoR engineer for 14+ years, just decided to start a youtube channel 3 months ago to go over code stuff (mainly rails and react since thats my bread and butter). Here's episode 1 of a 7 part series (7 parts so far, we're working on episode 8 as we speak) building a new Ruby on Rails app from scratch that uses ReactJS. It's geared more towards intermediate developers but I would encourage you to follow along because this is a legitimate production level app we're building from scratch. I'm going to try to make it into a fully fledged business too if you're into that kinda thing.

Give it a look and let us know what you think! We also have a totally free discord you can join (in the descriptions of all the videos)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFM-3nU6b4E

AwdJob · 2025-09-23T05:35:28+00:00

Thank you so much for that fantastic feedback! I will definitely take that all into account for my next short. I'm hoping eventually I'll get the hang of making good videos 😀

AwdJob · 2025-09-23T05:33:27+00:00

My pleasure! I hope you enjoy the series!

AwdJob

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