The Modern Full-Stack Toolkit for Real-World Projects in 2025

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Talk

Table of contents

Introduction

The tech stack landscape in 2025 is not what it was even two years ago. What used to be a fragmented, complex, and often opinionated world of full-stack development has evolved into a more opinionated, integrated, and developer-friendly ecosystem—driven by AI, better abstractions, and platforms that unify traditionally separate concerns.

If you’ve been building with the real world apps (Next.js, Tailwind, tRPC, Prisma, TypeScript), you’re not alone. But even the most loyal advocates are moving on—toward a new era of development where simplicity, modularity, and vibe coding are king.

Client Framework: React, Next.js, and the Rise of Tanstack Start

Despite the rise of alternatives, React remains the dominant client framework in 2025—not because it’s the most elegant, but because it’s the most supported. Every library, bundler, editor, and AI agent understands React. Its ecosystem is unmatched in both composability and comprehensiveness.

But React is no longer the full story. The real decision lies in how you structure your application around it. The three main contenders today are:

The key insight? Think in terms of routers, not frameworks. Next.js ships with its file-based router, Vite typically pairs with React Router, and Tanstack Start brings its own powerful routing solution.

If you need a static homepage, marketing site, or blog alongside a dynamic app, Next.js is still the best choice. It handles hybrid rendering seamlessly, allowing you to serve static HTML while keeping dynamic routes fully interactive. Features like multi-zone deployments (using Turbo for monorepos) let you split your blog, dashboard, and landing page into separate Next.js apps under one domain—without shared build times.

For simpler apps, Vite + React Router is faster to set up and easier to reason about. And Tanstack Start? It’s still early but promising—especially for developers who want fine-grained control over data loading and routing.

Styling with Tailwind and Shadcn

When it comes to styling, the winner is clear: Tailwind CSS + Shadcn/ui.

Tailwind’s utility-first approach has matured into a standard for rapid UI development. Combined with Shadcn, a collection of accessible, customizable React components built on Radix UI and Tailwind, it offers a powerful way to build consistent, beautiful interfaces—without the bloat of component libraries.

The core value remains: components as code, not configuration. Since everything lives in your repo, it’s version-controlled, modifiable, and AI-friendly—unlike traditional design systems that rely on dashboards or external tools.

This combo solves the biggest pain points of traditional CSS: specificity wars, naming hell, and inconsistent design. In 2025, it’s the de facto standard for full-stack TypeScript projects.

Package Management: Why PNPM Still Wins

Despite the hype around Bun, PNPM remains the preferred package manager—especially for monorepos.

While Bun promises speed and a batteries-included runtime, it still struggles with monorepo tooling compatibility. Integrating Bun with Turborepo or other build orchestration tools is fragile and often requires workarounds.

PNPM, on the other hand, uses a content-addressable store to hard-link dependencies, saving disk space and install time. It’s stable, fast, and works everywhere. The speaker admits they’ve stopped switching between package managers—they just use PNPM everywhere to avoid cognitive overhead.

And if you’re still on npm or Yarn, the message is clear: you’re being irresponsible. PNPM and Bun both cache packages globally, eliminating redundant downloads. If you manage more than a few projects, the performance and disk savings are undeniable.

Hosting: Staying on Vercel for Developer Experience

Despite strong competition from Cloudflare, I remain loyal to Vercel—not because it’s the cheapest, but because it’s the smoothest.

Vercel’s preview deployments, seamless GitHub integration, and Fluid Compute pricing model make it ideal for full-stack apps. You can deploy a project in seconds—just click “New Project,” connect your repo, and it’s live.

Cloudflare, while cheaper for long-running AI workloads (thanks to its V8 isolates), is a nightmare to configure. I have been spending days debugging deployment issues, reading Wrangler source code, and dealing with inconsistent behavior—only to find that even Cloudflare engineers gave incorrect advice.

And until recently, environment variables didn’t work properly on Cloudflare Workers.

But the real game-changer is Fluid Compute. Vercel now offers serverless functions that can handle multiple requests per instance, making it cheaper than AWS Lambda for many workloads. For Node.js apps with dynamic backends, Vercel delivers better performance, easier debugging, and superior developer experience.

The Database Revolution: Convex as a Full-Stack Backend

This is where everything takes a radical turn.

Some have abandoned SQL, Prisma, tRPC, Pusher, and even React Query—replacing them all with Convex (I will make an article later on this).

Convex is a backend-as-a-service that combines:

Instead of managing a separate database, ORM, API layer (tRPC), WebSocket layer (Pusher), and client state (React Query), Convex handles it all—with a unified TypeScript API.

You define functions in /convex/, and they’re automatically available on the client. No need for REST or GraphQL. Real-time updates? Built in. Optimistic UI? First-class support.

And the best part? It’s all code. No dashboard configuration. No manual schema migrations. The entire backend lives in your repo, making it version-controlled, reviewable, and AI-friendly.

Convex’s “components” system (e.g., work pools, rate limiting) and seamless integration with Vercel make it a compelling all-in-one solution.

Authentication: Clerk, WorkOS, and the Future with Better Auth

Authentication is no longer something you build yourself.

I recommend three paths:

  1. Clerk – Best for startups and indie hackers. It handles OAuth, email/password, MFA, user management, and even subscriptions—with generous pricing (users only count after 24 hours). Its pre-built UI components make integration trivial.

  2. WorkOS – Built for enterprise readiness. If you need SAML, SCIM, or Okta integration, WorkOS is the easiest path. Used by OpenAI, Cursor, and PlanetScale, it’s the go-to when your customers care more about auth than you do.

  3. Better Auth – An open-source alternative gaining traction. While not yet a hosted service, it’s being actively developed and integrating with Convex via a “component” model. The goal? Let you npm install auth into your Convex app with two lines of code in the future, sadly as of right now, Better Auth is not playing well with Convex, but we have an alternative solution built by both coming soon, check here https://convex-better-auth.netlify.app/.

The future is clear: auth should be a service, not a feature. And if Better Auth delivers on its promise, it could become the default for self-hosted, code-first auth in 2025.

Payments: Stripe, Autumn, and Polar

When it comes to payments, Stripe is non-negotiable—but you shouldn’t use it directly.

Stripe webhooks was so painful, here is a repo that offers some recommendations (https://github.com/t3dotgg/stripe-recommendations). The problem? Webhook reliability, data sync, and edge cases.

Their solution? Autumn and Polar.

Both abstract away the complexity of Stripe, letting you focus on your product. And if you’re using Clerk, its built-in subscription management is also a solid option for simple use cases.

The lesson? Don’t build your own billing system. Use Stripe under the hood, but wrap it with a layer that handles the pain.

Analytics: PostHog for Product-Led Growth

For analytics, I tend to use PostHog—an open-source platform that combines:

Unlike Google Analytics (which is for web analytics—traffic sources, page views), PostHog excels at product analytics—user flows, churn points, feature adoption.

If your users sign in, use PostHog. If not, consider Plausible (also open-source, Elixir-based) for lightweight, privacy-friendly web analytics.

PostHog’s self-hostable nature and rich SDK make it ideal for full-stack TypeScript apps. And with AI features that auto-detect trends, it’s becoming a product manager’s best friend.

Security & Bot Protection: Vercel Bot ID and Arcjet

Bot protection is critical for AI apps—where generation costs can be abused.

I have tried hCaptcha and Turnstile, but both failed:

The winner? Vercel Bot ID.

It’s free for basic use, deeply integrated into Next.js, and trivial to set up:

// next.config.mjs
import { withBotProtection } from "@vercel/bot-detector/next";

const nextConfig = {
  // insert config
};

export default withBotProtection({ ...nextConfig });

Then, protect specific routes:

const { isBot } = await verifyBot(req);
if (isBot) return res.status(403).end();

For non-Vercel users, Arcjet is a strong alternative—offering bot detection, rate limiting, email validation, and DOS protection via a clean SDK.

The key insight: security should be programmable, not configurational.

File Uploads: UploadThing vs. Convex Storage

For file uploads, two options stand out:

Convex doesn’t support temporary signed URLs or private file access checks.

UploadThing wins for complex file workflows, while Convex is fine for basic needs.

Bonus Tools: Monorepos, Mobile, IDEs, and AI Agents

A free alternative to Claude is using Qwen Code with Vs Code, you don’t have to pay for anything and it works good enough.

Other tools mentioned:

Conclusion

The stack of 2025 is not about chasing the latest frameworks—it’s about reducing friction, embracing integration, and letting AI do more.

The goal is no longer to hand-roll every layer. It’s to ship faster, with fewer moving parts, and more confidence.

So, should you copy this stack?

No.

But you should think like this developer: modular, intentional, and always optimizing for developer joy.

Because in 2025, the best stack is the one that lets you vibe code—and still ship something real.

See you on the next post.

Sincerely,

Eng. Adrian Beria.