Mike Dalessio
Open-source maintainer, 37signals
Mike has been contributing to open source since 2006, and helps maintain many commonly-used gems. He’s currently at 37signals working on security, infrastructure, and performance. He likes coffee, intimate chats, and long walks, and has been known to combine all three.
Lingua Clanka: Markdown APIs for Action Text
Agent accessibility is now table stakes, and Markdown is the lingua clanka — the universal rich text format for both AI agents and humans.
If you want your Rails app to be agent-accessible, your API needs to emit Action Text content as Markdown and accept Markdown updates from agents. Action Text’s HTML-first design has made this tricky in the past, but new Rails features make it simple.
This talk walks through Markdown support for Action Text: how Markdown is generated, and how parser configuration shapes what’s stored when agents send Markdown. You’ll also learn how Action Pack and Active Storage integrate with Action Text to provide these features as a natural extension of standard Rails APIs.