[ryeguy]

That makes sense as a general pattern, but probably less so in the context of rails which is typically a self contained monolith. It would be adding another hop, more indirection, and more complexity. It would introduce new problems like the need to segment your "real" api from your worker api for the purpose of load isolation.

[latchkey]

If it is a self contained monolith, that's perfect for this. You have a long running process, which scans a database for new work and then posts to localhost.