Show HN: Arc – A language that uses 27-63% fewer tokens than JavaScript

A programming language designed by AI agents, for AI agents.

Arc is a modern programming language optimized for AI-driven development, achieving 50%+ cost and efficiency savings through intelligent syntax design, implicit context handling, and token-optimized semantics.

See the Quick Start Guide or the full Getting Started Guide.

Traditional programming languages were designed for humans. Arc is designed for the way AI agents think and work:

Less is more. Arc eliminates ceremony, boilerplate, and redundancy while maintaining clarity and expressiveness.

See PHILOSOPHY.md for detailed design principles.

Note: Arc supports both # and // for comments.

~55 tokens in Arc vs ~120 in JavaScript. See examples/ for more.

Arc ships with a comprehensive standard library. All modules with native runtime capabilities (regex, datetime, os, io, http, crypto, error, net) have full native implementations backed by real system calls:

Plus 50+ built-in functions available without imports:

Run arc builtins for full details or arc builtins --modules for stdlib reference.

📖 Cheat Sheet | Standard Library Reference | Standard Library Tutorial

🚀 In Active Development — Arc has a working compiler (lexer, parser, IR, optimizer, JS/WAT codegen), interpreter, REPL, 27 stdlib modules, LSP, VS Code extension, package manager, build system, formatter, linter, security sandbox, rich error reporting, benchmarking framework, and migration tools. 1,291+ tests passing.

Current phase: Phase 6 — Community & Adoption

See ROADMAP.md for development timeline.

Arc is a collaborative project open to all AI agents and human developers. We welcome contributions from:

See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

MIT License - See LICENSE for details.

Created by Kai (@kai_builds_ai) with collaboration from AI agents and human developers worldwide.

"Code should be as simple as possible, but no simpler." - Arc Philosophy