Rails Should Stay the Source of Truth Even as Agents Drill Down to C

Pencils Down, Notation Up

After a Rails World 2026 keynote urging full acceleration into LLMs, the author compiles Basecamp's Campfire to 202,000 lines of C to test whether agents should edit Rails or the compiled output. Rails fits in context, states each intent once, and preserves decisions; C is 70× too large and erases intent. The author argues Rails is the notation, and compilation targets like Rust can deliver 85–140× throughput without giving it up.