Even pre-LLM this is how suckless tools work, I actually don’t much mind having to edit a variable in a header and recompile when you make a config change.
Only for trivial programs - I don't mind running make on a 2500 line C program, I would mind having to recompile LLVM or Firefox.
Which is why many of us happily ignore their existence.
Suckless software does have config files they just have a “.h” extension
Having your config file be a c header and needing a recompile is different than not having any user accessible configuration