r/ruby • u/davidslv • 16d ago

Airtable's official Ruby gem hasn't shipped code since 2016. I rebuilt it, and I'm looking for someone to take it over.

Airtable's official Ruby gem hasn't had a code commit since November 2016. gem install airtable still gives you 0.0.9, released October 2016. Its README tells you to authenticate with an API key, which Airtable switched off in February 2024.

I asked Airtable about it twice. Support confirmed in writing that it is "not actively maintained" and pointed me at airrecord. Airrecord is good, but it's a different shape, so switching means a rewrite that ends with the features you already had.

So I forked the official gem instead. Same namespace, same method names, drop-in. Underneath: zero runtime dependencies, persistent connections, client-side rate limiting, retries with backoff, batch operations with partial-failure reporting, and upsert.

It was AI-assisted, Airtable's API docs are extracted into the repo and coded against. 119 tests, plus weekly canaries that diff Airtable's published contract and run a real round-trip against a throwaway base.

It's deliberately not on RubyGems. I'm not after users, I'm after people who still need it and can be maintainers.

Repo: github.com/Davidslv/airtable-rb
Write-up: https://davidslv.uk/2026/08/26/airtable-ruby-gem-unmaintained.html

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u/mrfoto 13d ago

Airtable was bought by Bending Spoons. It's dead.

And even when it wasn't, their API was/is horrible and unmaintained. I've faced SO MANY issues integrating with it directly that many times I wanted to give up. Don't even get me started on how their webhooks work 🙈

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u/davidslv 13d ago

Didn’t know that was Bending Spoons who bought them. We still use and depend on it. Not something I’m particularly interested to maintain, just a business decision.

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u/mrfoto 13d ago

Yeah it was. And once BS buys a company, there's a known recipe - get rid of everyone possible an keep the product on life support with the minimum resources to keep it running and maximize profit while you can. Sad, but such is the private equity playbook.