How I Built an AI Selfie Analyzer with Rails 8 + Claude Vision API

I built FirstVibe -- an AI-powered selfie analyzer that gives you a "vibe check." Upload a photo and within 30 seconds you get personality scores, a celebrity lookalike, aura type, dating energy, red/green flags, and a bunch of fun predictions. Think "what do people actually think when they first see you?" powered by Claude's vision capabilities. It has processed over 6,000 selfie analyses so far. Here is how it works under the hood. The Stack Rails 8.0.4 with Ruby 3.3.0 PostgreSQL with UUID primary keys everywhere Hotwire (Turbo + Stimulus) -- no React, no SPA Tailwind CSS -- dark theme, no custom CSS beyond a few animations Propshaft + Importmap -- zero Node.js, zero Webpack Solid Queue -- DB-backed job queue running inside the Puma process Claude Sonnet 4 + Haiku 4.5 via the ruby-anthropic gem (Vision API) OpenAI API for AI caricature generation Stripe Checkout for payments Render.com for deployment The "no Node.js" part is not an accident. Rails 8 with Importmap and Propshaft means