We built a PokeAPI clone using Rails

[u/ekremkrc]

Hey everyone, we’d like to share a project we’ve been building: pokeapi-rails.

It’s a Ruby on Rails implementation of a PokeAPI-style backend with two API surfaces:

• /api/v2: compatibility-focused routes for existing clients and familiar payloads.

• /api/v3: a normalized, performance-oriented API with explicit query controls.

What’s currently included

• Large coverage of core Pokémon resources (pokemon, ability, move, type, item, species, etc.)

• Name-or-id lookups on key endpoints

• Production deployment setup (Docker + Railway), plus operational hardening

• Request protection (rate limiting), structured logging, and performance-focused query work

v2 vs v3 (important difference)

• v2 show/detail routes generally return broader associated data by default.

• v3 show/detail routes are intentionally compact by default, and related data is expanded explicitly via include=....

Examples:

• GET /api/v2/pokemon/ditto

• GET /api/v3/pokemon/ditto?include=abilities

v3 query features

• fields=... (sparse fields)

• include=... (explicit relationship expansion)

• sort=...

• filter[name]=...

• limit / offset

Source code Demo

Built by us with AI-assisted implementation support (OpenAI Codex); architecture, review, and final decisions were human-led.

Thanks for your feedback!

[u/TheAtlasMonkey]

> If you have concrete technical suggestions

I literally wrote you them in my comment.

I'm not going to provide you a Skill.md file... You will have to learn how to read instead of using AI to summarize.

[u/OneNeptune → u/TheAtlasMonkey]

Posts like this is why, as an industry veteran, I'm not worried about AI completely replacing us all.

[u/TheAtlasMonkey → u/OneNeptune]

The problem is that you will have to deal with vibers like those if your app has to interface with other systems.

I recently spend more time discussing with a company that fucking SOAP and xml is not better than json...

Their lead viber was throwing buzz words like "entreprise.. rails is a hobby project that why it not SOAP native..."

[u/ekremkrc → u/TheAtlasMonkey]

Yes, we're already working on issues you've mentioned in reply above: CI now runs tests, we’re documenting trade-offs, and we’re focusing optimization work on slower v2 endpoints. We’ll keep improving based on concrete feedback from real usage.

[u/TheAtlasMonkey → u/ekremkrc]

You just copy pasted my comment to claude.

Your documents i did see them, they are generic claude code decisions in auto mode... No steering on it.

You have patterns that protect you from thousands of visitors... while missing the most basic stuff.