Dates are must. They don't need to be big and bold, just to be there, somewhere. When I read a blog post, I need that information for context. It is especially true for technical blog posts. Was it written before version X? What was the context this was written in? Date helps.
I am not using ecrire, but I see a bunch of reasons to use that over Ghost, but it depends on each user's use cases. For me, first, Ghost is in Node. I prefer my stuff to be in Ruby, especially if I want to change stuff and/or contribute. That said, if it does not fit your needs...
Side note: I was deceived by Ghost. I was expecting their dashboard to be there on version one, but after a whole bunch of commits and a few months, with money, it is still not there. Anyways, no big deal! :)
I have been using octokit for a while now and it is by far the best wrapper around for Ruby. Just make sense to have it official now that Wynn Netherland is working @ GitHub.
I recently started to play with Ember on a Rails 4 app for fun. On the other hand, we are moving right now at my job to a more API-style Rails app too, but with Backbone (soon)...
Sounds promising! I'll have a closer look and likely give it a shot soon-ish.