A lot of Rails apps have records that transition through states: queued, processing, done. With Hotwire, I render a status badge partial and broadcast replacements when the state changes. A background job updates the record, and the model broadcasts a

Sometimes cascading deletes are the wrong UX and the wrong ops story. Restrict deletion when children exist and provide a user-facing error. This prevents data loss accidents.

For leaderboards, let the database do ranking. Window functions are fast and expressive. Use them to compute daily top N without Ruby loops.

The atomic decorator/context manager ensures all-or-nothing database operations. I wrap related operations in @transaction.atomic or with transaction.atomic() blocks. If any operation fails, the entire transaction rolls back. This prevents partial dat

Email is still a core product channel, and it’s easy to ship broken messages if you don’t treat it like code. I keep templates in source control, render them with a simple templating engine, and send via nodemailer (or a provider SDK). I always includ

Client-side debounce is best done in Stimulus (not in view helpers). This controller submits the nearest form after a short pause, while letting Turbo handle the navigation and frame replacement.

Turbo includes a progress bar at the top of the page, and it’s a surprisingly visible part of perceived quality. I like to set the color and height to match the app’s brand. This is pure CSS: target .turbo-progress-bar. You can also make it slightly t

Some UI elements should survive navigation: a music player, a search input, or a navbar with an open dropdown. Turbo’s data-turbo-permanent lets you mark a DOM node that shouldn’t be replaced during visits. I use it carefully—permanent nodes can keep

My favorite Hotwire demo is the classic “inline create” on an index page. The form sits at the top of the page. When submitted, the create action returns turbo streams that (1) prepend the new item into the list and (2) replace the form with a fresh,

Counter caches drift (deleted records, backfills, manual SQL). A repair job that recomputes counts safely is invaluable. It’s the kind of operational code you’re glad you wrote the first time a dashboard is wrong.

Sometimes you want only part of the screen to navigate—like a sidebar list updating the main content. Turbo Frames can do this cleanly: render the sidebar normally, and make its links target a turbo_frame_tag called main. Clicking a link swaps the mai

Without a centralized error handler, you end up with a mix of thrown errors, ad-hoc res.status(500) blocks, and inconsistent JSON shapes. I use one Express error middleware that maps known errors to stable codes and logs unknown errors with request co