Ryan Townsend's wroclove.rb 2026 talk arguing that 'Rails was right all along' about HTML-over-the-wire and that the web platform is catching up. Opens with data: median JavaScript shipped has 3×'d over a decade (Tim Kadlec measured a +15% desktop / +10% mobile jump correlated with the rise of LLMs), while 2/3 of newly-purchased devices (e.g. Galaxy A26) perform like a 2017 iPhone 8 — so more JS on slower real devices. Walks through Rails' frontend history: 2005 checkout via SVN and dumping JS into /public; 2006 Rails 1.11 RJS; 2009 Sprockets + CoffeeScript + Sass + Chris Wanstrath's Pjax; Rails 3.1/4 Turbo Links default; the 'dark years' of resume-driven development, microservices, NoSQL, GraphQL, SPAs and Webpacker; and the return via Rails 7 with import maps, Hotwire/Turbo, and Prop Shaft. Cites Loren Stewart's argument that frontend complexity should be a gradient rather than binary 'toy SSR vs real SPA'. Core web vitals chart shows Rails ahead of JS frameworks on origins passing all three thresholds. Second half presents five APIs: (1) View Transitions (level 1 in-page, level 2 cross-document — one line of CSS for fade, named transitions for matched elements); (2) Speculation Rules (declarative JSON for prefetch / prerender with eagerness levels — conservative/moderate/eager/immediate; Google's new prerender-until-script middle ground; Safari about to ship prefetch); (3) HTTP Compression Dictionaries (IETF RFC approved ~Sept 2025 — ~96% compression on his personal site, 5KB vs 20KB; standalone dictionaries replicate SPA shell/content split); (4) Invoker Commands + Interest Invokers (button commandfor/command attributes for dialog/menus/number steppers, interest invokers for hover popovers and mobile long-press, with polyfills); (5) Declarative Partial Updates (experimental template-tag fragment streaming like server-side Hotwire, could be browser-native for form/nav soft navigations — Ryan will push for it as his first browser API, his demo UI runs on 614 bytes of JS). Q&A covers migrating an old React app (measure client-side performance first, iterative wins), Hotwire + Turbo broadcasts alignment (generally fine, future standardization via declarative partial updates), and HTMX ('a great little library, like jQuery of its era; goal is to make itself redundant').