community day | july 15th
Hack Spaces at RubyConf 2026
Collaborate, contribute, and shape the future of Ruby.
What are hack spaces?
Hack Spaces (previously called “Hack Day”) is a new event at RubyConf 2026 designed to bring Ruby developers, Rails developers, and open source maintainers together for a day of hands-on collaboration.
This will take place during Community Day on July 15th (the second day of the conference). Community Day will feature workshops, panels, and Hack Day—dedicated spaces for working on the projects that power the Ruby ecosystem. We hope you’ll join us for an experience focused on connection and contribution!
Whether you’re an experienced maintainer or just curious about open source, Hack Spaces offers a unique opportunity to build, learn, and make an impact on the ecosystem. Beginners are welcome (and ENCOURAGED!) to get involved
Learn More About Ruby Central
Featured Open Source Projects
The following open source maintainers will be LIVE on the ground at RubyConf 2026 during Hack Spaces, sharing their projects and engaging with the community. If you’re interested in getting involved with any of these projects, we recommend checking out their repos and digging in before the event (although this is not required)!
Ruby Language
Ruby language development sits at the intersection of deep C expertise and a passion for the Ruby runtime itself. Whether you're already contributing to CRuby or you're curious about where to start, this space is for you. Join core team members and committers as they collaborate, ask hard questions, and shape the future of the language.
project maintainers:
Aaron Patterson
Senior Staff Engineer
Shopify
Peter Zhu
Ruby Core Committer and Staff Engineer
Shopifyexperience level:
beginnerhack space station:
red tablesscheduled time:
tutorialkit.rb
TutorialKit.rb is an open-source framework for building interactive Ruby tutorials that run entirely in the browser - no server, just pure WebAssembly magic for the whole Rails dev stack. In this session, we're going to live-code (or rather, vibe-code) an interactive tutorial with the help of AI. Feel free to bring your own gem for which you'd like to build an interactive tutorial, or just stop by to say hi.
project maintainers:
Albert Pazderin
Software engineer
Evil MartiansGitLab Office Hours
We provide resources for anyone to get started with open source contribution through a detailed onboarding process. Discord, and regular office hours. Let's get started contributing to GitLab
project maintainers:
experience level:
beginnerhack space station:
orange tablesscheduled time:
JRuby
JRuby is a fast, parallel, portable implementation of Ruby that runs on the JVM. Come learn how you can use JRuby to make your apps faster, more parallel, and more portable, or learn about JRuby itself and how you can contribute in the future!
project maintainers:
Charles Nutter
The JRuby Guy
Headius Enterprises
Sondra Radke-Nutter
President
Headius EnterprisesRubyGems
Come by and meet the team that runs the Ruby community’s gem hosting service. We’re here for you, whether it’s to pair on an open issue with RubyGems or RubyGems.org, to talk through your thoughts on our service, or just to say hi.
project maintainers:
Colby Swandale
Technical Lead
Ruby Central
experience level:
beginnerhack space station:
green tablesscheduled time:
Evil Martians
Join not-evil-at-all aliens from Mars to hack together on popular open-source projects from Mars and Earth, including TestProf, Yabeda, and more or whatever you bring to the table. We'll be happy to collaborate and solve whatever open-source puzzle you've stumbled upon in the world of Ruby!
project maintainers:
Garnet.js
Have you ever wanted to work on implementing Ruby itself? Does writing C code make you sweat? Then come hack on garnet.js, a Ruby implementation written in Typescript! Garnet is pretty new, so there are a lot of bits of the Ruby standard library that aren't implemented yet, and we could really use your help!
project maintainers:
Cameron Dutro
Software Engineer
Cisco Merakiexperience level:
intermediatehack space station:
yellow tablesscheduled time:
RubyEvents
RubyEvents aims to index all Ruby Events! We need your help to do that. We have a long list of Ruby Events that need to be added to the index, so if you're looking for a gentle introduction to open-source and a easy place to start, we're a great choice! Our obsession with the history of Ruby events doesn't mean our stack is historical. We've got an edge stack featuring the latest in RubyLLM tools, Stimulus, Hotwire, Charm-ruby, and of course, Herb and ReActionview. If you want to test out what it feels like to develop in the bleeding edge of Ruby, drop by and pick up a good first issue! Feel free to visit our booth to discuss and contribute to Herb and ReActionview with Marco Roth (or any of his other projects).
project maintainers:
Rachael Wright-Munn
Senior Software Engineer
Triumph Financial
Marco Roth
Independent Consultant & Open Source Contributor
Build an iPhone w/ Ruby & YAML Workshop Office Hours
Ruby Native turns your Rails app into a real iOS app. It works with any frontend framework and doesn't require Xcode. You add a gem, write YAML config, and deploy native apps from the command line. The Hack Space pairs with my workshop on the same topic, so it's a natural place for attendees to keep building afterward.
project maintainers:
Joe Masilotti
Mobile consultant for Rails businesses
experience level:
beginnerhack space station:
blue tablesscheduled time:
SuperGlue
Superglue is The Rails Way of building React apps. No separate API layer. No client-side routing. Plus the best interop between Rails and React's ecosystem. Stop by this Hackspace to learn and talk about thoughtbot's approach to building Rails and React applications. We'll highlight how we use the full Rails toolset — Turbo Streams, controllers, server-side routing, views, controller tests, form helpers — all while working with React. You're also welcome to pull up a chair and talk (or vent) about the frustrations of frontend development.
project maintainers:
Ruby/net-imap
Ruby client API for interacting with email servers using the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP).
project maintainers:
experience level:
intermediatehack space station:
Red Tablesscheduled time:
Factory_Bot
factory_bot is a fixtures replacement with a straightforward definition syntax, support for multiple build strategies, and support for multiple factories for the same class (including factory inheritance). Stop by if you’re curious about using or contributing to factory_bot; have questions; or just want to chat about Ruby development.
project maintainers:
Valerie Burzynski
Senior Developer
thoughtbothow community day works
On July 15th, instead of traditional talks, RubyConf will host Community Day. This is a day where attendees can get more hands-on and “choose their own adventure”:
- Participate in workshops and panels
- Join Hack Spaces to contribute to open source
- Connect with peers and mentors in a collaborative environment
Hack Spaces are open to everyone, from first-time contributors to seasoned Rails veterans.
We hope to see you there!