API-only Rails & the Bridge

dogpark carried baggage it never needed

Every dogpark app you've built inherits from ActionController::Base — the full Rails controller, built for a browser: it can render HTML templates, read and write cookies, flash a message between requests, and defend against cross-site form attacks. None of that ever mattered for /api/walkers — you were shaping a JSON hash from the very first line of this module. It worked, but the app was carrying weight it never used.

rails new --api builds a DIFFERENT kind of app from the ground up: one that assumes every response is JSON and never generates a browser page at all.