Built a Rails 8 + Kamal 2 starter template — what would you add/change/remove?
I put together a Rails 8 boilerplate and I'd love feedback from people who actually run Rails in production.
The repo: https://github.com/HammerSpb/rails-template
What it is: a Rails 8 template with two fully Dockerized environments (production + staging) deployed via Kamal 2.
The one non-obvious design choice: instead of needing a remote VPS to try the deploy flow, it ships a kamal-host container - an Ubuntu box with sshd + docker CLI that acts as Kamal's Linux deploy target locally. Kamal SSHes into it and runs containers on your host's Docker daemon via a mounted socket. The point is that the exact same kamal deploy workflow moves untouched to a real VPS later - you just change the host/port/user.
What's in the box:
- Rails 8 with Solid Queue / Cache / Cable (Postgres-backed, no Redis)
- PostgreSQL 16 as a Kamal accessory, one container per environment
- Dockerized dev DB + a local Docker registry
- JSON structured logging, a /up health dashboard, mkcert TLS helper
- One-command Postgres backups, a Makefile of deploy/log/backup aliases
- RuboCop, ERB Lint, Brakeman, bundler-audit, GitHub Actions CI preconfigured
What I'm asking:
- What's missing that you'd consider non-negotiable for a new Rails app?
- Anything here you'd remove as over-engineering or a bad default?
- Is the local kamal-host container a useful idea, or am I solving a problem that doesn't need solving?
- Better conventions for anything you spot?
Happy to take blunt feedback - the goal is something genuinely useful, not just my own preferences.