diff --git a/lib/rb/ext/bytes.h b/lib/rb/ext/bytes.h
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7108d83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/lib/rb/ext/bytes.h
@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+/**
+ * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
+ * or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file
+ * distributed with this work for additional information
+ * regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file
+ * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
+ * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
+ * with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
+ *
+ *   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+ *
+ * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
+ * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
+ * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
+ * KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the
+ * specific language governing permissions and limitations
+ * under the License.
+ */
+
+#include <ruby.h>
+
+/*
+ * A collection of utilities for working with bytes and byte buffers.
+ *
+ * These methods are the native analogies to some of the methods in
+ * Thrift::Bytes (thrift/bytes.rb).
+ */
+
+VALUE force_binary_encoding(VALUE buffer);
+VALUE convert_to_utf8_byte_buffer(VALUE string);
+VALUE convert_to_string(VALUE utf8_buffer);