cff-version: 1.2.0
message: "If you use, adapt, or build upon this work—academically or industrially—please cite it as follows."

title: "Rethinking High-Level Code as the Primary Software Artifact: A Technical Note"
abstract: >
  This technical note proposes a two-layer architecture for future software systems: a human-centered semantic layer (requirements, invariants, and tests) and an agent-generated persistent layer (machine-near representations like LLVM IR or C). 
  As software maintenance becomes increasingly agentic, the historically natural identification between human-facing source code and the persistent executable artifact may weaken. 
  The note includes a formal observation on the limits of mediated execution and an empirical illustration showing a ~74x speedup through agentic bypass of high-level frontends.

authors:
  - family-names: "Di Santi"
    given-names: "Eduardo"
    affiliation: "University of Colorado Boulder"
    email: "eduardo.disanti@colorado.edu"

version: 1.0.0
date-released: 2026-04-30
license: CC-BY-4.0
url: "https://github.com/eduardodisanti/to-boldly-go-beyond"
repository-code: "https://github.com/eduardodisanti/to-boldly-go-beyond"

keywords:
  - "agentic code generation"
  - "persistent software artifacts"
  - "LLVM IR"
  - "software architecture"
  - "compilation"
  - "native-tight execution"