Generators are APIs — Designing Better DX in Rails

This article is based on the talk I gave at Tropical on Rails 2026 in São Paulo. If you were there, this is the written version. If you weren't — welcome. This is the whole thing. Introduction: Rails generators are one of the most underrated tools in the framework. Every Rails developer has used them. Few have designed them. And almost nobody treats them as what they actually are: an API. This article makes the case that generators deserve the same design attention we give to REST APIs — and sho