Rails Consultant

A collection of [skills][] for Rails development and consulting, with an emphasis on learning, communication, and client success.

Source Material

Several skills draw on articles, books, and talks created by thoughtbot:

• [Testing from the Outside-In][outside-in]
• [Rails Test Types and the Testing Pyramid][testing-pyramid]
• [Break Apart Your Features into Full-Stack Slices][full-stack-slices]
• [Job Stories][job-stories]

Installation

Via skills

Install with [skills][]:

npx skills add thoughtbot/rails-consultant

Via Claude Code

Add the marketplace to Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add thoughtbot/rails-consultant

Install the plugin:

/plugin install rails-consultant@rails-consultant

Commands

Feature Development

/feature‑dev

Takes one feature slice from idea to reviewed, committed code in a single guided pass: shapes it into a well-defined slice, builds it test-first, reviews and fixes the diff, then lands it as a clean commit. Chains /slice → /test-driven-development → code review → /git-commit, holding the discipline at each handoff — it won't build until the slice is sharp, and won't call the work done until the diff is reviewed and the suite is green. It also keeps the implementation lean, holding the production-code diff to a ~300-line budget. Scoped to one slice on purpose; hand it an epic and it helps you pick the single slice to build now.

/feature-dev Add a "copy to clipboard" button to code snippets on docs pages
/feature-dev Authors can schedule a post to publish at a future time
/feature-dev Admins can soft-delete comments and restore them within 30 days

Adapted from Anthropic's [Feature Development][feature-dev] plugin, threaded through this plugin's /slice, /test-driven-development, and /git-commit skills and closed out with Claude Code's built-in /code-review --fix.

Understanding the Codebase

/explain

Explains a specific piece of code or a user-facing flow. Point it at a file, class, or method for a close reading; point it at a feature or user action for a system-level diagram with entry points, branching logic, and side effects.

/explain app/models/user.rb
/explain password reset
/explain the Stripe webhook handler

/prior‑art

Finds every place the codebase handles a specific concern — the consistent pattern and the exceptions. Answers the "how does this app do X?" question before you build something that reinvents it.

/prior-art How does this app handle authorization?
/prior-art Where do we send transactional emails?
/prior-art How are background jobs retried on failure?

Test-Driven Development

/test‑driven‑development

Strict outside-in TDD workflow for Rails. Starts with a feature spec describing behavior from the user's perspective, lets each failure guide what to build next, and drops to unit tests for non-trivial logic. Enforces the discipline: no production code without a failing test first. Red-green-refactor.

/test-driven-development Users can cancel their subscription from the billing page
/test-driven-development Fix the bug where archived projects still appear in search results

Based on [Superpowers][superpowers] by Jesse Vincent, adapted for Rails with guidance from [Testing from the Outside-In][outside-in], [The Testing Pyramid][testing-pyramid], and [Testing Antipatterns][antipatterns].

Code Quality

/socratic‑review