Front-End Fire

This week TanStack joins the AI wars with the alpha release of TanStack AI: an open-source AI SDK with a unified interface across multiple providers. TanStack AI is an open-source ecosystem of libraries and standards, and it is client, server, and AI provider agnostic, to make building AI-enabled apps accessible to all.

In a surprise move, AI company Anthropic acquires JavaScript runtime Bun to accelerate its development of Claude Code. Apparently, Bun has been central to Claude Code reaching $1 billion in run-rate revenue in just six months, and Anthropic’s brought the team in house to keep the momentum going.

And it’s been another rough week for security in JavaScript. First, a new self-replicating, credential stealing malware attack, dubbed Shai-Hulud 2.0, swept the npm ecosystem and compromised 800 npm packages in the process, and then a critical security vulnerability was discovered for any React projects using React Server Components. Just remember to lock down your dependencies and install those patches ASAP, folks.

Timestamps:

• 1:22 - TanStack AI
• 9:12 - Anthropic buys Bun
• 21:03 - Shai-Hulul 2.0 on npm and an RSC vulnerability
• 30:23 - What’s making us happy

News:

• Paige - Shai-Hulud 2.0 on npm and RSC vulnerability
• Jack - TanStack AI
• TJ - Anthropic buys Bun (Bun post) (Anthropic post)

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - The Durrells TV series
• Jack - Essentialism book
• TJ - Dungeon Crawler Carl book series

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

Another week, another new AI IDE. This week, Google released the Antigravity IDE (yet another VS Code fork) which offers unique twists like “cross-surface” agents, user feedback to agent-generated artifacts, and a view of all agents across any workspace.

The team behind the Unistyles cross-platform library just debuted Uniwind for all the React Native devs who want to use Tailwind styling in their native apps. Uniwind brings Tailwind-style className support to RN at build time, and has a custom, high-performance CSS parser to handle both Tailwind 4 and plain CSS files. 

Prisma 7.0 is out, and so is Rust from its codebase. The team completely rebuilt it in TypeScript to cut down on its bundle size and the communication layer between Rust and the JS runtime that was actually slower than just JavaScript through and through.

In Lightning News, even if you don’t develop in Angular, the Angular v21 dev release video is worth a watch, Cloudflare had a big Internet outage this week, Firefox has teased AI in its browser “the Firefox way”, and the State of React Survey 2025 is open now (please vote for Front-end Fire in the Podcasts section!).

Timestamps:

• 1:27 - Prisma 7.0
• 9:35 - Uniwind
• 12:18 - Antigravity
• 27:32 - Angular v21 release video
• 29:20 - Cloudflare outage
• 37:11 - Firefox gets an AI window
• 38:47 - State of React survey open
• 40:36 - What’s making us happy

News:

• Paige - Uniwind
• Jack - Prisma 7.0
• TJ - Antigravity

Lightning News:

• Firefox gets an AI window
• Cloudflare had a big outage
• The State of React Survey 2025 is now open
• Angular v21 Dev Release video

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - Upcoming holidays and seeing family
• Jack - StroboClip HD for the guitar
• TJ - Dungeon Crawler Carl book

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

In a surprise move, Snapchat open sources its cross-platform UI Valdi. Valdi lets devs write UI components in TypeScript then compiles them to native views on iOS, Android, and macOS, offers instant hot reload without recompiling, and integrates well into already existing native apps. 

GitHub Universe 2025 wrapped up just a few weeks ago, and it had a bunch of new AI agent updates to share. Think: a single source to manage agents across GitHub, Mobile, CLI, and VS Code, custom agents with tailored prompts and tools, new Copilot integrations and agentic code review, and Plan Mode. 

TanStack DB released v0.5 and Query-Driven Sync. With Query-Driven Sync, a component’s query is the API call and DB handles the fetching, caching, and updating, and provides different sync modes for different use cases. 

Chapter Markers:

• 0:47 - Snapchat open sources cross-platform tool Valdi
• 7:08 - GitHub Universe updates
• 15:45 - TanStack DB query-driven sync
• 19:54 - GitHub eliminates toasts
• 22:49 - Firefox has an updated mascot
• 24:09 - Vibe coding named word of the year
• 33:26 - What’s making us happy

News:

• Paige - Snapchat open sources cross-platform UI Valdi
• Jack - TanStack DB query-driven sync
• TJ - GitHub Universe recap

Lightning News:

• GitHub eliminates toasts from their designs
• Firefox has an updated mascot
• Vibe coding named word of the year

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - Holiday light displays
• Jack - Cursor Composer
• TJ - Inflatable dragon yard decoration

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

This week is a news roundup while cohost Jack is away for a hackathon in SF. 

First up, is how Chrome DevTools has added AI to its panels. Now users can ask Gemini to explain console errors, make CSS changes via in the elements tab, and explain traces collected in the performance panel.

HTMX has also jumped from v2 to v4 (alpha), rebuilding the internals after 5 years of maintaining the project. Upgrades include: going from XMLHttpRequests to fetch, explicit attribute inheritance, and improved history caching.

Angular’s meta-framework AnalogJS also just launched 2.0 which offers file-based routing, better Vite ecosystem support, and unified SSR, SSG, and islands-style hydration in one cohesive setup.

Rumor has it that next year Apple will be using Gemini to drive Siri, as it continues to try and get Apple Intelligence to work reliably.

GitHub has officially disabled classic token creation for npm publishing in an effort to reign in the supply chain attacks we’ve reported on for the last few months. 

And last but not least, a company called NEO has a home assistant robot available for preorder now. The robot can clean, fold laundry, do dishes, and so on, but here’s the kicker: it’s a human piloting it remotely. Is this really the robot enhanced future we imagined?

Timestamps:

• 1:16 - Chrome DevTools gets a bunch of AI features
• 8:39 - htmx v4 alpha
• 14:25 - AnalogJS 2.0
• 17:09 - Apple allegedly to use Gemini to drive Siri
• 22:13 - GitHub disables classic token creation for npm
• 27:38 - NEO home robot
• 35:58 - What’s making us happy

News:

• Paige - HTMX goes right from v2 to v4 (alpha)
• TJ - Chrome DevTools gets a bunch of AI features

Lightning News:

• AnalogJS 2.0
• Apple allegedly to use Gemini to drive Siri
• GitHub’s disabled classic token creation for npm
• NEO home robot

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - The Survivalists novel
• TJ - Pokemon Legends Z–A game

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

It’s been almost 3 weeks since the React Compiler hit v1.0 and Jack gives an update on the ease of adding it to a React-based project and immediate performance improvement he’s seen from it. 

Popular AI-powered IDE Cursor just released v2.0, and it’s going hard on the agent mode, offering things like: a multi-agent interface where agents can run in parallel working on the same task with different models, and a new frontier model that’s 4x faster.

Then the hosts then get existential about whether the AI hype bubble is about to burst, if it’s really capable of stealing anyone’s jobs, and how much you should trust an LLM when making decisions about things like the tech stack for a new project. 

Timestamps:

• 1:43 - React Compiler 1.0
• 8:13 - Cursor 2.0
• 22:28 - AI discussion on bubbles and more
• 43:13 - What’s making us happy

News:

• Paige - AI: bubbles and more bubbles, employment impact, and proper use
• Jack - React Compiler 1.0
• TJ - Cursor 2.0

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - Heated Under Desk Foot Rest
• Jack - The Toxic Avenger movie
• TJ - A London reporter interviewed the wrong Bill DeBlasio

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

Another week, another new AI-browser. This time it’s OpenAI’s turn to introduce ChatGPT Atlas. As with the other AI browsers, Atlas knows the context of open tabs, has an agent that can do things for you, and (maybe its defining feature) it has "memory" built in so conversations can draw on past chats and details when needed.

The team behind Vite reveals their path to revenue with command line devtool Vite+. Devs will soon be able to test, lint, format, bundle, and even view their apps’ stats with Vite+, with the performance we expect from a compiler toolchain built completely in Rust. Plus, it’s free for individual users and OSS projects, and has annual licensing prices for startups and enterprises.

Vercel held not one but two conferences this week: Next.js Conf and then Ship AI. Next.js 16 was unveiled with improvements to Turbopack, a Next.js DevTools MCP, and updates to Cache Components. And Ship AI covered updates to the AI SDK, Vercel’s AI Gateway and Agents, and more. 

Chapter Markers:

• 02:05 - ChatGPT Atlas
• 12:38 - Vite+
• 20:21 - Next.js conf and Ship AI
• 28:07 - Claude Code on the web
• 33:02 - The Louvre was robbed
• 38:02 - What’s making us happy

News:

• Paige - Vite+
• Jack - Next.js Conf and Ship AI conf updates
• TJ - ChatGPT Atlas

Lightning News:

• Claude Code on the web
• The Louvre was robbed

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - The Diplomat TV series
• Jack - Timers to limit doom scrolling
• TJ - Claude Code

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

Back in May, the Remix cofounders revealed they were reimagining Remix v3 from the ground up, and this past week at Remix Jam, they gave a sneak peek of it. It’s fair to say this new framework shouldn’t be called Remix at all because it’s departed so far from its origins: devs manually update state, it uses signals, routes are defined in a TS doc, and it will ship with a component library, for starters. Will it catch on, who knows?

Not to be outdone by React v19.2 last week, Next.js 16 beta debuted (with support for React 19.2 included). In addition to the latest version of React, Next.js 16 has also declared Turbopack, RSC support, and React Compiler all stable, and improved its caching system as well.

And Bun is back in the news with the release of Bun 1.3, and it’s a doozy of a minor version release. Bun wants to be a full-stack JavaScript runtime as it now includes a full-stack dev server, built in support for MySQL and Redis DBs, routing, and the ability to package an entire project into one executable for cross-platform support. Well done, Bun team!

Chapter Markers:

• 01:14 - Remix v3
• 10:38 - Next.js 16 beta
• 17:35 - Bun 1.3
• 24:42 - Firefox 144 released w/view transition support
• 25:19 - HBO changes TV channel names
• 28:00 - W3C has a new logo
• 31:25 - What’s making us happy

News:

• Paige - Bun 1.3
• Jack - Remix v3
• TJ - Next.js 16 beta

Lightning News:

• Firefox 144 released w/view transition support
• W3C has a new logo and the Gavin Belson signature from Silicon Valley 
• HBO changes TV channel names

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - The Gilded Age TV series
• Jack - KPop Demon Hunters
• TJ - Madison, WI

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com

It’s been a big week for React devs as the annual React Conf just wrapped up in Las Vegas. 

The biggest news? React and React Native are moving out from under Meta to a new React Foundation with an independent technical governance structure. The React Foundation’s mission will be to support the React community and ecosystem, and a board of directors will steer it going forward.

Also in time for React Conf, React 19.2 dropped, and it brings new features like partial pre-rendering, a new useEffectEvent hook, and an component that lets devs prioritize rendering  tomaintain state and make navigation faster.

Not to be outdone, Cloudflare announced a new RPC protocol called Cap’n Web, which is a pure TypeScript implementation. What makes Cap’n Web unique is that it supports bi-directional calling, promise pipelining, and lets users design RPC interfaces that look like regular JavaScript APIs.

Chapter Markers:

• 03:18 - React Foundation
• 07:10 - React Compiler 1.0 and React 19.2
• 17:13 - Cap’n Web
• 24:19 - Opera Neon
• 27:16 - The EU is considering cookie law changes
• 31:43 - The Internet Archive hits 1 trillion pages
• 33:33 - What’s making us happy

Links:

• Paige - Cap’n Web pure TypeScript RPC system
• Jack - Introducing the React Foundation
• TJ - React 19.2
• European policymakers may be fixing the cookie banner headache they created
• Opera wants you to pay $20 per month for its new AI browser
• Celebrating 1 Trillion Web Pages Archived 

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - The Terminal List: Dark Wolf TV series
• Jack - Fender Acoustasonic guitar
• TJ - Portable stadium seat addition

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

Anthropic dropped a bunch of good Claude Code updates. There’s a new a native VS Code extension, a v2 of the terminal version of Claude, code checkpoints, and it’s all powered by Sonnet 4.5, Anthropic’s best coding model yet.

On top of Claude’s glow up, the Google Chrome team launched a Chrome DevTools MCP. AI coding assistants will be able to debug web pages directly in a Chrome browser, including using DevTools to review network requests, console output and page structure, simulate user interactions, and even automate performance audits.

In a poorly planned move, the CEO of Vercel tweeted a picture of himself meeting with the controversial Israeli Prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. This sparked a massive online backlash, some Vercel employees quit, and many customers are leaving the hosting site and vowing to stop using Next.js, as well. 

Timestamps:

• 00:46 - Claude Sonnet and Claude Code updates
• 7:55 - Chrome DevTools MCP
• 13:50 - Vercel Drama
• 19:03 - State of JS survey is open
• 20:21 - GitHub’s plan to make npm more secure
• 25:30 - Meta builds data center the size of 70 football fields
• 29:04 - What’s making us happy

Links:

• Paige - Chrome DevTools MCP
• Jack - Vercel’s in hot water after a selfie with Benjamin Netanyahu
• TJ - Claude Code levels up
• State of JS survey is open
• GitHub’s got a plan to make npm more secure
• Meta builds AI data center the size of 70 football fields
• Paige - Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3
• Jack - reactnorway.com

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

CSS wizard, and now Staff Design Engineer at Shopify, Adam Argyle, joins us on this episode to talk about what web development interviews are like in 2025 and what folks can do to stand out today.

Links:

• Adam’s nerdy.dev website
• Adam’s Argyle Ink website
• Adam on YouTube
• Adam on Bluesky
• Adam on GitHub
• Adam on X
• Adam on LinkedIn
• https://nerdy.dev/cascading-secret-sauce 
• https://www.capcut.com 

What Makes Us Happy this Week:

• Paige - Why Is This Interesting (WITI) newsletter
• TJ - Strands NYT game
• Jack - Final Destination series
• Adam - EP-1320 medieval - Clues By Sam

Thanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. You can join us in our Discord channel, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube.

• Front-end Fire website
• Blue Collar Coder on YouTube
• Blue Collar Coder on Discord
• Reach out via email
• Tweet at us on X @front_end_fire
• Follow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.com
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast