AI Integration & Automation for Rails applications
We build LLM-powered features and automated workflows directly into your existing Ruby on Rails application. No parallel platform, no rewrite — just well-tested Rails code that happens to be intelligent.
What are AI integration and AI automation?
AI integration is the engineering work of connecting language models to an application's data, business logic and user interface. AI automation uses those integrations to run multi-step workflows with little or no manual effort. In a Rails application, both live in ordinary service objects, background jobs and database tables.
From a single smart feature to autonomous workflows
LLM features and copilots
Drafting, summarizing, classifying and question answering inside the screens your users already work in.
RAG and semantic search
Embeddings stored with pgvector in your PostgreSQL database, hybrid search and answers that cite their sources.
AI agents and tool calling
Agents that plan and act through your existing service objects, with scoped permissions and approval steps.
MCP servers
Expose your Rails application to AI assistants through the Model Context Protocol, so customers can use it from Claude or ChatGPT.
Document processing
Extract structured, validated data from PDFs, scans and emails, and write it straight into your models.
Workflow automation
Triage, routing, enrichment and follow-ups as background jobs, or orchestrated with n8n, Zapier and Make.
Streaming interfaces
Chat and assistant experiences that stream token by token using Turbo Streams or React.
Evals and observability
Evaluation suites that run in CI, plus tracing of every model call: prompt, model, tokens, latency and outcome.
Guardrails and cost control
Prompt-injection defenses, PII redaction, output validation, rate limits and per-feature budgets.
An AI layer inside your Rails application
We do not build a separate AI platform next to your product. The AI layer is a thin, well-defined part of the monolith, sitting between your interface and the domain logic you already trust.
- In-app copilot
- Streaming chat
- Semantic search
- Smart forms
- Admin automations
- LLM gateway
- Prompt registry
- Retrieval (RAG)
- Tools and agents
- MCP server
- Guardrails
- Evals and tracing
- Models and business rules
- Service objects
- Background jobs
- Authorization
- Domain events
- PostgreSQL + pgvector
- Redis
- Object storage
- Claude
- GPT
- Gemini
- Open-weight models
It looks like Rails, because it is
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Plain Ruby objects
AI features are service objects and jobs your team can read, test and change. No framework lock-in.
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Permission-aware retrieval
Retrieval runs through your existing scopes, so a model never sees a record the current user could not open.
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Async by default
Slow model calls run in Sidekiq or Solid Queue with retries, timeouts and provider fallback.
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Tested like everything else
Unit tests with recorded responses, plus evaluation suites that score real outputs on every change.
class Support::AnswerQuestion def call(question, user:) # 1. Retrieve: only records this user may see sources = Article.visible_to(user) .nearest_neighbors(:embedding, embed(question), distance: "cosine") .first(5) # 2. Generate: grounded in those sources answer = LLM.chat(task: :support_answer) .ask(prompt_for(question, sources)) # 3. Record: every call is traced and scored AiTrace.record!(user:, question:, sources:, answer:) answer end end
Simplified example. LLM is a thin gateway in your application that wraps the provider SDKs; nearest_neighbors comes from the neighbor gem, which adds pgvector support to Active Record.
What separates a demo from a feature you can rely on
A prototype that answers correctly most of the time is easy. These are the concerns we design for before anything reaches your users.
| Concern | How we handle it |
|---|---|
| Answer quality | Evaluation suites built from real examples, run in CI and tracked over time against a baseline. |
| Hallucinations | Grounding in retrieved data, source citations, validated structured output and a human fallback path. |
| Security | Prompt-injection defenses, least-privilege tools, escaped output and approval steps for sensitive actions. |
| Privacy | Data minimization, PII redaction before prompts, and provider settings chosen to match your retention requirements. |
| Cost | Token budgets per feature, caching, prompt trimming and routing simple tasks to smaller models. |
| Latency | Streaming responses, background jobs for long work and the fastest model that meets the quality bar. |
| Reliability | Timeouts, retries, idempotent jobs and automatic fallback to a second provider. |
| Observability | A trace for every call: prompt version, model, tokens, latency, cost and user feedback. |
How an AI pilot runs
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01
Frame
One workflow, one success metric, and a baseline measured before we change anything.
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02
Prototype
A working version on your real data, so quality is judged on facts, not a demo script.
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03
Harden
Evals, guardrails, error handling, cost limits and monitoring.
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04
Ship
Release behind a feature flag to a small group, then widen.
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05
Measure
Compare against the baseline and decide together what comes next.
AI integration questions, answered
How do you add AI to a Ruby on Rails application?
We pick one workflow, define how success is measured, and build the feature as ordinary Rails code: a service object that calls a language model, a background job for anything slow, and database tables for prompts, traces and embeddings. It ships behind a feature flag with an evaluation suite, then rolls out gradually.
Do we need Python or a separate AI service?
Usually not. Rails can call model APIs directly, run long tasks in background jobs and store embeddings in PostgreSQL with pgvector. A separate Python service makes sense for custom model training or heavy data-science pipelines, and we will say so when that is the case.
What is RAG and when do we need it?
Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) means fetching relevant records or documents from your own data and giving them to the model along with the question. You need it whenever answers must be based on your content — help articles, contracts, tickets, product data — rather than on what the model learned in training.
Which language model should we use?
It depends on the task. We compare candidates on your own examples for quality, latency, cost and privacy. Many products end up using more than one: a small, fast model for classification and a stronger model for reasoning or drafting. The gateway we build makes that a configuration choice.
How do you keep LLM costs under control?
By measuring them from the first day. Every call is logged with its token usage and cost. We set budgets per feature and per customer, cache repeated work, trim prompts, and route simple tasks to cheaper models. You see cost per outcome, not a surprise invoice.
How do you deal with hallucinations?
We reduce them by grounding answers in retrieved data, asking for structured output that is validated before use, and showing sources to the user. We detect them with evaluation suites built from real examples. And for decisions that matter, a person approves the result before anything changes.
Can AI agents take actions in our application safely?
Yes, when their tools are your existing service objects. An agent then goes through the same validations and authorization checks as a user would. We give each agent the minimum set of tools, require approval for destructive or financial actions, and log every step.
What is an MCP server and should our product have one?
Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that lets AI assistants connect to external systems. An MCP server for your Rails application lets your customers use your product from assistants such as Claude or ChatGPT. It is worth considering if your users already work inside those tools.