# Atomic Locomotive

> Ruby on Rails rescue and prototype works, Austin, Texas. Takes stalled, AI-generated apps (Lovable, Bolt, v0, Replit, Cursor) and rebuilds them in Rails in five working days; builds new Rails prototypes in five working days. Fixed price, client owns the repo from the first commit, every run ships a runbook and a recorded walkthrough. A Boffo Digital company operated by Bill Eisenhauer.

- Site: https://atomiclocomotive.com/
- Founder: Bill Eisenhauer (https://atomiclocomotive.com/about/) — shipping software since 1981, Rails since 2007, author of GeoKit, early engineer at Stitch Fix, senior engineering manager at ezCater
- Contact: bill@atomiclocomotive.com
- Location: Austin, Texas · serves clients anywhere
- Updated: 2026-08-17T19:33:40-05:00
- Full text of every page: https://atomiclocomotive.com/llms-full.txt

## Services (fixed price, USD)

- **Diagnostic** — $2,497 (credited against any run). 20 minutes free, then a written teardown of what you actually have. https://atomiclocomotive.com/diagnostic/
- **Rescue Run** — $7,997 (fixed · 5 working days). Your AI-built app, rebuilt in Rails and deployed. Five days. https://atomiclocomotive.com/rescue/
- **Prototype Run** — $4,997 (fixed · 5 working days). Idea to a working, hosted Rails prototype. Five days. https://atomiclocomotive.com/prototype/
- **Roundhouse** — $1,497 (per month · cancel anytime). Monthly upkeep once it is running. Cancel any month. https://atomiclocomotive.com/roundhouse/

Two runs on the schedule at a time. The diagnostic fee comes off the fare if you board. Founding rates for the first ten clients, in exchange for permission to write up the results.

## How it works
1. Free 20-minute call. Ends with: no run needed / a diagnostic is warranted / book a run directly.
2. Diagnostic (one day, written teardown, credited against a run or refunded if no run is needed).
3. Booking: one-page scope, fixed fare, departure date. Half at booking, half at handoff.
4. The run: five working days with a daily staging link and an end-of-day note.
5. Handoff: repo in the client's GitHub org, deployed to their infrastructure, tests, runbook, recorded walkthrough — the Handoff Standard (https://atomiclocomotive.com/handoff/).
6. After: take it to a team, hire someone, book another run, or the Roundhouse.

## Core pages
- https://atomiclocomotive.com/rescue/ — the Rescue Run, day by day
- https://atomiclocomotive.com/prototype/ — the Prototype Run, day by day
- https://atomiclocomotive.com/roundhouse/ — monthly upkeep
- https://atomiclocomotive.com/diagnostic/ — book the call; ten-point self-check
- https://atomiclocomotive.com/how-it-works/ — first email to handoff, payment, ownership, confidentiality
- https://atomiclocomotive.com/why-rails/ — the Rails + AI argument with the Rails Foundation "Agents on Rails" benchmark
- https://atomiclocomotive.com/handoff/ — the Handoff Standard: nine deliverables, each with a way to verify it
- https://atomiclocomotive.com/faq/ — every question people ask before booking
- https://atomiclocomotive.com/terms/ · https://atomiclocomotive.com/privacy/

## Dispatches (articles)

- [Why AI-built apps demo fine and fail in production](https://atomiclocomotive.com/dispatches/why-ai-built-apps-demo-fine-and-fail-in-production/) (Rescue, Aug 16, 2026) — Four independent studies from 2025 measured the same thing: AI coding tools produce software that works and is not safe. Here is what they found, why it happens, and what a rescue actually has to fix.
- [How to verify a Rails handoff in one afternoon](https://atomiclocomotive.com/dispatches/how-to-verify-a-rails-handoff-in-one-afternoon/) (Handoff, Aug 16, 2026) — You just paid for a Rails app. Before the developer leaves, here are the nine checks — most of them one command — that tell you whether you actually own something you can run without them.
- Feed: https://atomiclocomotive.com/feed.xml

## Evidence the site cites
- Veracode, 2025 GenAI Code Security Report: models chose the insecure option 45% of the time across 80 tasks and 100+ models.
- Escape.tech, State of Security of Vibe Coded Apps (Oct 2025): 5,600+ apps scanned; 2,038 critical vulnerabilities, 400+ leaked secrets, 175 exposed-PII cases.
- Tenzai (Dec 2025): 69 vulnerabilities across five AI tools; every tool introduced SSRF; none implemented CSRF protection.
- Carnegie Mellon SusVibes: over 80% of functionally correct AI solutions contained a security vulnerability.
- Rails Foundation / Evil Martians, Agents on Rails (Aug 2026): top model solved 92% of atomic Rails tasks; models mostly hand-roll instead of using the framework API.

## Who it is for
Founders and small funded teams with an AI-built app that will not hold up in production; founders who need a real, hosted prototype by a date; agencies that land a Rails project without a Rails bench.

## Topics covered
Rails rescue, vibe-coded app rescue, Lovable/Bolt/v0/Replit rebuild, AI-generated code security, Rails prototype in five days, Rails 8, Hotwire, PostgreSQL data modelling, application handoff, deploy runbooks, Kamal, Rails maintenance retainer, fixed-price software development.