Default Tech Stack

Below is a reference of my default tech stack for webapps.

Core Technologies

TypeScript: A strongly typed superset of JavaScript used for all projects. Its primary benefit is catching errors during development, which improves overall code quality and maintainability.
Tailwind CSS: A utility-first CSS framework for all styling. It enables rapid UI development by applying pre-existing classes directly within the HTML markup, removing the need for separate CSS files.

Next.js: The primary choice for front-end development. As a React framework, it provides powerful features out-of-the-box, such as server-side rendering (SSR) and static site generation (SSG), which are crucial for performance and SEO.
React: Used for projects that require self-hosting or a more lightweight setup without the opinionated structure of a full framework. It is a JavaScript library for building component-based user interfaces.

Express.js: A minimal and flexible Node.js web application framework used for building custom JavaScript backends. Its unopinionated nature provides a blank canvas for creating tailored server-side logic.
Flask: A lightweight and extensible web framework for Python. It is the preferred choice for building APIs for AI-powered applications or other Python-based backend services.

Shadcn UI: A collection of beautifully designed and accessible components. Unlike traditional component libraries, these are not installed as a package. Instead, you copy and paste the code for individual components into your project, giving you full control over their implementation.

Clerk: A complete user management solution for projects that do not require Single Sign-On (SSO). It provides a comprehensive suite of embeddable UIs, APIs, and SDKs to handle authentication, user profiles, and more.
Convex Auth: The preferred authentication method when using Convex for the backend. It integrates seamlessly into the Convex ecosystem, simplifying the process of securing applications.

WorkOS: The go-to solution when enterprise-grade Single Sign-On (SSO) is a project requirement. It provides a modern API to quickly add SSO and other enterprise-ready features.

Convex: The preferred database solution. Convex is a reactive, real-time database that simplifies backend development by managing data flow and state synchronization automatically, reducing the need for complex state management logic on the front end.
Prisma with PostgreSQL: The choice for projects that require a traditional relational database. Prisma is a next-generation ORM that provides a type-safe database client and a declarative schema, making database interactions safer and more predictable.
PlanetScale: A MySQL-compatible, serverless database platform designed for massive scale. It is used for applications that anticipate or require extremely high levels of traffic and data, offering features like non-blocking schema changes.

Vercel: Best for Next.js projects. It provides a platform for hosting and scaling applications, offering a wide range of features and integrations. All serverless, however.
Railway: A cloud platform for webapps and general containerized hosting. Good for a variety of things, and good free and base tiers.
Sevalla: Another good cloud host for general projects. More for frontend webapp hosting imo, but has lots of features. Unintuitive UI unfortunately.
Netlify: Another good cloud host for general projects. Has really great auto branching features. Great for live testing and doing controlled rollouts with no downtime.
Cloudflare: Cloudflare workers are best in class for some workloads. Vercel serverless functions are best at other things. It's worth doing a deep dive to understand the difference, but cloudflare definitely deserves a spot on this list.

Cloudflare: The go-to DNS provider for everything. Don't bother using anything else.