Jul 25, 2025
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Demo
"What Even is Active Agent?" A Real-World Demo With Adrian Marin of AvoHQ [VIDEO]
By Rhiannon Payne
One of the most common things we hear from developers who’ve heard of Active Agent is:
“I’ve seen it on social media, but I still don’t really get what it is.”
This feedback is completely fair. Since day one, we've struggled to succinctly explain how Active Agent works to build AI features in Rails and why it's the best solution out there.
Active Agent isn’t just another AI wrapper. It introduces some new concepts, and even though it’s designed to feel natural in Rails, it’s still a shift in mental model.
That's why we filmed this video: a live pairing session between Justin Bowen (creator of Active Agent) and Adrian Marin (creator of AvoHQ).
You can watch it here:
What They Built
The goal was to walk Adrian through building a real agent in Rails, from setup to a working AI feature, and get him to the 'aha' moment where he fully understood the power and value of Active Agent and saw how it could be useful in his Rails apps, such as Avo.
In the session, Justin and Adrian built an invoicing agent that:
Parses PDF invoices
Extracts line items and totals using an LLM
Converts currencies through a tool call
Stores parsed data to the database
Uses standard Rails patterns, including controllers, views, service objects, and lifecycle callbacks
What Made Active Agent Click
Throughout the session, Adrian asked questions and provided feedback on areas where the concepts were unclear. By the end, he summarized the experience:
“Now I FINALLY get what Active Agent is! This gave me an actual idea for Avo.”
“The Rails ecosystem is better with it than without it.”
The pairing session surfaced several key factors that led to that shift in understanding:
A relatable use case with real data
Step-by-step integration with familiar Rails components
Separation between application logic and LLM behavior
Live feedback and iteration on prompt structure, tool calls, and output rendering
Our Next Steps
The session also provided insights into areas for improvement, including tooling, documentation clarity, and more consistent examples.
We’re planning to build out:
A guided tutorial based on this video
Better example apps
Improved documentation around prompt rendering, tool call structure, and agent lifecycle
Mapping between Active Agent primitives and their ins and outs
How to integrate in various ways with Rails Action Controller
Get Involved
If you’re ready to bring AI into your Rails app the right way, Active Agent is the framework for you!
Here’s how you can connect with Justin or get involved with Active Agent…
🛠️ Try it out (and open issues or submit a PR!)
💬 Join the Active Agent Discord
✨ Hire Justin to work on your AI project
📩 Email Justin at justin@activeagents.ai or schedule a call (free 30 min consulting sessions)
