inertia-rails-ssr_skill

Overview

This skill sets up Server-Side Rendering (SSR) for Inertia Rails applications to deliver pre-rendered HTML from the server. It improves SEO, speeds up initial page loads, and provides basic page access for users with JavaScript disabled or on slow connections.

How this skill works

It adds a Node-based SSR entry that creates Inertia server renderers (Vue or React), configures Vite Ruby to build SSR bundles, and wires Rails to call the SSR server. The client entrypoints are adjusted to hydrate server-rendered markup. The skill includes production process examples (systemd, PM2, Docker) and optional clustering, custom ports, and conditional SSR per-controller.

When to use it

• Pages that need SEO and proper Open Graph meta tags (landing pages, posts, products).
• Improve first contentful paint for users on slow networks or mobile devices.
• Support users who have JavaScript disabled or limited clients (bots, crawlers).
• When you need server-generated title/meta tags for social sharing.
• When you want predictable initial markup before client hydration.

Best practices

• Keep SSR work minimal: defer heavy computations to the client.
• Ensure client and server render identical markup to avoid hydration mismatches.
• Use request-scoped state and avoid global mutations to prevent memory leaks.
• Include CSS in the SSR bundle or extract critical CSS to avoid flash of unstyled content.
• Monitor SSR latency and add caching for static or rarely changing pages.

Example use cases

• Render blog posts and marketing pages server-side for SEO and social previews.
• Pre-render product pages so search engines index correct meta tags and images.
• Serve a lightweight HTML shell to users on slow connections to improve perceived performance.
• Run SSR in production with systemd or PM2 to keep the Node SSR server alive.
• Enable SSR only for public-facing controllers while disabling it for admin routes.