Open Source case studies

Focused notes on the problem, the engineering approach, and the measured result. Public work links to the underlying implementation whenever possible.

Related services: Rails performance consulting & Rails Consulting

01 Forem

Forem role-query optimization results across four paths: role queries fell from 568 to 4 for the admin member list, 139 to 3 for its CSV export, 13 to 3 for the async user payload, and 4 to 1 for the reCAPTCHA service.

Reducing role queries across Forem’s role-heavy paths

An open source Rails performance optimization that made role checks association-aware across Forem’s admin member list, CSV export, async user payload, and reCAPTCHA service.

02 Forem

Forem analytics activity backfill results at a glance: 90% lower median backfill time, 93% fewer SQL queries, 86% less SQL time, and 85% fewer allocated objects, with ten article backfills completed in six queries.

Making Forem’s cold analytics backfill 10× faster

An open source Rails performance optimization that replaced per-article analytics recomputation with bulk SQL aggregation, cutting median backfill time by 90.1%.

03 Gumroad

Gumroad Products API results at a glance: 40% faster requests, 69% less SQL time, 78% fewer SQL events, 94% fewer duplicate query fingerprints, 23% fewer allocations, and all 70 per-product target queries eliminated.

Removing per-product queries from Gumroad’s Products API

A co-authored open source Rails performance fix that batch-loaded product serialization data, cutting mean response time by 40.4% and SQL events by 77.7%.

04 OpenProject

OpenProject Work Packages API results at a glance: 56% lower median server duration, 38% less SQL time, 84% fewer SQL events, 90% fewer duplicate query fingerprints, and both repeated type-variant query patterns reduced from 381 to zero.

Eliminating 762 repeated queries from OpenProject’s Work Packages API

An open source Rails performance fix that removed repeated type-variant lookups from OpenProject’s Work Packages API and cut median server duration by 55.7%.

05 Gumroad

Gumroad Sales API results at a glance: 51% faster requests, 83% less SQL time, 74% fewer SQL events, 94% fewer association point lookups, and 31% fewer allocations, with the same API output.

Cutting Gumroad Sales API response time in half

An open source Rails performance fix that removed N+1 queries from Gumroad’s sales endpoint while preserving its API response.

06 Gumroad

Gumroad upsells dashboard benchmark for 81 products: 50% lower mean request duration, 76% less SQL time, 78% fewer SQL events, 94% fewer duplicate query fingerprints, 62% fewer allocations, and variant queries reduced from 81 to 1.

Removing an N+1 query from Gumroad’s upsells dashboard

An open source Rails performance fix that halved mean request time for a large catalog by replacing per-product variant counts with one grouped query.

07 Discourse

Discourse admin active-users endpoint results at a glance: 67% lower mean server duration, 90% less SQL time, 94% fewer SQL events, 56% fewer allocated objects, and 150 per-user 2FA existence checks eliminated.

Making Discourse’s admin active-users endpoint 66.5% faster

An open source Rails performance fix that replaced per-user two-factor authentication checks in Discourse’s admin active-users endpoint with two batched queries.