The new AI wave, Rails Builders III and Mom Test reading group

Hey all!

Here are some mixed-bag updates with useful resources to help us reach the next level, as well as Rails Builders invites for building together.

Agentic Coding

I've been among the lucky ones in our development team to have gotten sponsored for a Claude Code Max plan by ClickFunnels. Huge thanks at this point, else I would have still been in the dark about where we are in the AI coding revolution.

For giant codebases, it's unlike anything I've tried to create, first ideas around solving a particular problem or finishing features according to specific instructions.

For greenfield projects, it's pretty spot on when generating new code and iterating on it.

It's also unmatched in parsing a gigantic OpenAPI schema, extracting all the paths and matching them with HTTP methods, descriptions, and then building a dynamic Ruby client SDK gem for it. Everything in a few hours, not days.

If you are not using state-of-the-art coding agents (Claude Code, Codex or Amp) yet, and you are not sure what this is all about, listen to this:

Adventures in babysitting coding agents — Changelog & Friends — Overcast

Overcast

If you are riding the new agentic coding wave with me already and using Claude Code, I can recommend these further diggings to bump your technological superpowers:

• Claude Code best practices from the people who built in.
  • The above summed up in a 47 tips video.
• Running multiple agents at once. 🤯
• Claude Code in real action.

Rails Builders III ⚔️⚔️⚔️

I had the last calls for the new Rails SaaS Builders group last week and the good news is that we had about 5-6 people generally interested in the group!

As a reminder, the plan was to help us build your app customer-first, following the Funnels on Rails approach:

• Get your users and subscriptions through real sales funnels, so you think about your offer, market and ideal customer from day one, not after you've built your product (i.e., never).
• Build it on steroids with THE king category open source Rails starter kit: Bullet Train.

The bottleneck turned out to be the sales funnel part. I've played through some open-source options for the customer-facing part of the whole thing, and I'm not super excited about any of those options.

So what I want to offer is a guided "build your SaaS customer-first" program:

The program itself is free, but you will need a ClickFunnels subscription to join (we'll be working hard on the sales funnel part during the 14-day trial - or 30 if you follow their 1-funnel-away-challenge - where you can still decide whether it's for you or not).

We are 3 Rails Builders already excited about getting this rolling within the next couple of weeks. So let me know if you wanna join this one!

The Mom Test async book club

Pascal, a couple of other Rails Builder folks, and I are reading The Mom Test using the most fun async book club app, to ramp up on a framework for organizing and having useful customer conversations:

• Don't even mention your idea as long as you can.
• Deflect compliments on your idea.
• Don't get into pitch mode.
• Anchor fluffy comments with tangible facts.
• Dig into ideas and feature requests.

If you want to learn about all that and deepen you knowledge, we will also have occasional sync book club sessions to discuss tactics and applications of the content.

As part of the Rails Builders accountability groups, I am also implementing the Mom Test with one of my product ideas. If you want to witness that process live and create alongside other savage Rails Builders, consider getting on the waitlist for Rails Builders I ⚔️ and Rails Builders II ⚔️ ⚔️ or join the new Rails Builders III ⚔️ ⚔️ ⚔️ as described above. We have one spot open for the Tuesday group and will pick someone from the waitlist this or next week. Just let me know what you want!