Building a personal site with TanStack Start
Why I chose TanStack over Next.js and how the DX compares after a week of building.
I've shipped several personal sites over the years — Gatsby, Next.js, SvelteKit, plain Vite. Each one taught me something. This one taught me that file-based routing doesn't have to mean opinionated everything.
TanStack Start is still young, but the DX is surprisingly tight for a v1. The router is the star: typed params, typed search params, nested layouts, and loaders that actually feel ergonomic. I didn't hit a single "why won't this type-check" moment that lasted more than five minutes.
The part I was most curious about was SSR. TanStack Start handles it through Vinxi under the hood, which means you get server functions, streaming, and edge-ready output without wiring up a custom server. For a personal site that's mostly static content, that's more than enough.
Where it still shows its age is the ecosystem. Plugins, adapters, and third-party integrations are thinner than Next.js. If you need a rich plugin ecosystem or a large community to copy-paste solutions from, stick with Next. But if you want to actually understand your stack and enjoy the process, Start is worth the bet.
I'll keep building here. The repo is clean, the patterns are consistent, and I'm not fighting the framework.