966: A Look Back at Web Dev in 2025  ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Temporal API Is Finally Ready** - The Temporal API finally landed broadly in 2025 and solves many timezone and duration edge cases developers struggled with. - Wes Bos and Scott Tolinski urge developers to start learning Temporal now because browser support is imminent and practical. Transcript: Wes Bos So I said both Chrome and Safari will ship by end of year. And Scott said that it will be in at least one browser. So if you haven't heard of it, temporal is this massive API that is set to replace the data API. You might be saying, well, what's wrong with the data API? Stop changing stuff. Scott Tolinski I don't know if anybody's ever said what's wrong with the data API. Fair, fair. Wes Bos So the temporal api will allow you to encapsulate durations so if you've ever wanted to say i i want to somehow make three days how can you say that in a in a standardized way or if i want to Do january 25th to january 26 but regardless of time zones or if you do want to include time zones in a start and an end, there's just time is time is hard. Time is complex. What is time? And the temporal API is going to solve all of these is going to be a absolutely killer API. And where are we at right now? I think we nailed it. So here's where we're at. May 26. It was added to firefox good december 3rd it entered into chrome beta which means that a a month later january 7 we're going to january 7 2026 we're going to be it's going to be landing in Chrome stable and then it's currently in safari behind a flag so like we've been talking about temporal for what like four years and i feel like we're we're pretty much there i'm super Scott Tolinski Excited for it i like temporal and i've been using it with a polyfill for like three years now so you know i've been using it for a while and i i i've shipped stuff with that polyfill so yeah I i'm stoked about it. But I this is the type of movement that it feels like I've been wanting to see for a long time. And yeah, we're at Yeah, you can start to learn temporal y'all. ([Time 0:01:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/311d7d6a-e13a-4eb0-baf5-5eeaeb2f92d7)) - **Local AI Grew But Isn't Dominant** - On-device small AI models and browser-run inference grew but did not become ubiquitous in 2025. - Cost, model quality, and developer ergonomics still favor hosted models for many teams. Transcript: Scott Tolinski Our next one is that on device AI becomes common on device small AI models, OCR detection becomes much more ubiquitous and developer friendly running either in the browser or on user Devices. Well, we did see in browser AI stuff in Chrome, I feel like a lot of these types of features, they kind of, they go under the radar a little bit, we are seeing more OCR stuff, we are seeing More speech to text text to speech, we are seeing all those things. As far as like small model AI, I think that's happening more often than we realize. Wes Bos I don't think it's as common. I'm going to say we miss this. And this is someone I love Transformers JS. I've been playing with a lot of the built in Chrome stuff where you can use a local model in Chrome. I don't think we're there quite yet. I think people care much more about it's not that expensive to hit an API. But I think as people start to say, what does it mean when you don't have to pay anything for it, when it just runs on your user's device? You could run it constantly in a loop. So I don't think we're quite there just yet you are seeing more a little bit more niche models you know toxicity detection is a really good one where if you need to detect if something is Spam or something's someone's saying something really off chrome is trying to figure out what the api looks like what does it look like to have structured inputs and outputs um they're Really just playing with a lot of that right now same with transformers js so i'm gonna punt that next year you miss i'm gonna say well like but listen i'm saying that as someone that's Scott Tolinski Used them several times this year but if we're going by what the prediction actually was it becomes more common more common than what it was before yeah that's a win to me. Yeah, you're right. That's fair. It's not that it is. I'm trying to get us some points here, Wes. I think it became more common. Whether or not that became ubiquitous. I guess we did say much more ubiquitous. Not it will become ubiquitous. ([Time 0:03:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/63b9d96a-0f5a-49b4-a5fd-8dc98de75fe0)) - **WebGPU Unlocks Practical In-Browser ML** - WebGPU shipped widely and can make in-browser ML dramatically faster compared to WASM. - Performance gains move models from demos into usable features when WebGPU is used. Transcript: Scott Tolinski And I do not, I think it might be a little bit early, man, but TypeGPU is doing some cool stuff where they even have like an example of text prediction and stuff using WebGPU. I don't think enough people are doing this just yet. People are doing it, but I don't think enough people are doing it. Wes Bos The WebGPU stuff just dropped in all the browsers, and WebGPU is what's going to make it fast in browser. Like I have an example where I generated alt text for with Transformers JS and the WASM example versus the web GPU example is six times faster. And like then it moves from a cool demo to like, oh, we could actually use this. So I think that's the one that's the one that we're going to hopefully see more of in the next year. But that's that's the next show. I'm not going to talk about that. ([Time 0:06:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d6ca897d-6573-4683-abc7-985d93bafaaa)) - **Tooling Boosted AI More Than Raw Models** - Model quality improved incrementally but tooling and agent workflows produced much better real-world outputs. - Scott credits model leaps and improved agent tooling for making AI code generation far more reliable in 2025. Transcript: Wes Bos So let's talk about AI. So our big prediction was that the the models will plateau in quality and we're going to see big improvements on how the products use the existing models. And I think we nailed that. But like, let's let's dive into like the different aspects of like, where are we with AI versus 365 days ago? Right. Because in some regards, the models didn't get that much better. Right. Like we saw incremental improvements. You think they did. Scott Tolinski So i think they did so tell me about this i think if we're comparing how accurate the responses of a raw input versus output of something like uh what is the latest one from from anthropic Yeah it uh it is a sonnet seven or opus 4.5 or sonnet 4.5 i think opus 4.5 is raw input versus raw output is light years better and more reliable than what we had last I just do. I trust the output of Opus 4.5 so much endlessly more with all kinds of tasks. It's still not great at CSS. It's still not great at some things using browser standards, but the end result, I think, is much better. Okay. Wes Bos Input output. The input output. So I think that the actual tools that we use with these things got significantly better. So the agents, the, like the quality of code that agents are able to generate, even with, if you're comparing them with the models that we had at the end of last year, the output of them Are so much better because of the tooling built around it you know like the cursor co-pilot all of these agentic tools that sort of go back and forth and reason with themselves the quality Of that has gotten significantly better in in fact like i was like halfway through this year thinking about this prediction that i had and i was like oh boy was I wrong about that because I was like I think we'll just say incremental improvements but like I feel like the actual quality of the code that these things output like you said is significantly better and I'm attributing Scott Tolinski That just to tools but maybe I'm wrong about that it's more model based I think it's both I think there's a big increase in both because we did see a tremendous improvement in the tools Themselves. But I do think if I'm going to, like I said, Opus 4.5 and I'm giving it the same question, I think I would like the answer enough that it makes me feel like it's a huge leap because where like Last year, I wouldn't trust it at all. Last year, it was like kind of a fun experiment. I would make fun of vibe coding. This year, I can vibe code personal software using these tools and actually feel like it's not total garbage. In fact, I've gone back with projects that I would have vibe coded last year using the latest model. And it could clean up the code substantially better. And that is part tools. ([Time 0:07:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/36b29ef2-5a41-4175-b7f7-06fe75d501da)) - **Generative Media Is Great — And Problematic** - Image and video generation became technically impressive but often offer limited practical value and raise trust problems. - Wes Bos and Scott see heavy meme use and negative trust implications from deepfake-capable tools. Transcript: Wes Bos Jen has gotten unbelievably good. Right. Like we saw unfortunately shock. Unfortunately, Sora, Nano Banana. It's a weird place because they're unbelievably good, yet a very not that useful. There obviously are some use cases for it. Like we're designing a jacket right now and I've been going back and forth, doing some mock-ups with that and getting ideas. And I find that to be super useful. But like aside, like Sora was funny for like a week and a half and ha and now it's just like like boomers getting tricked on facebook by videos that have the watermark removed and like nano Bananas people just posting like like fake stuff like i think it's like an at least right now this stuff is a massive net negative in terms of like just trust and is there any good use for These like lifelike videos aside from it being absolutely hilarious? Scott Tolinski I don't even think it's funny. Like I said, it was entertaining for like an hour and a half. And I was like, oh, that's funny or it's creepy or it's weird. Yeah. But like, man, I can't imagine more than that being like, oh, I made this now. It's like, oh, it was really funny when I made Wes boss in The Sopranos looking like Pikachu. OK. OK. ([Time 0:10:39](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4e661081-5ffe-4a56-b79c-781bec1ac788)) - **Text-To-UI Tools Improved Quickly** - Text-to-UI and agentic tools improved, making prototyping and debugging faster for both devs and non-developers. - The hosts note non-developers increasingly build tinkers with tools like Bolt and V0 even if devs still prefer Figma for early design. Transcript: Scott Tolinski Next one text to ui tools get really good things like bolt.new v0 etc will get much better and faster they get so good that some people stop using figma at least for early prototypes yeah I don use them still. Because I think that's like the part of the project that I personally want to have a hand in the most is the early stage parts of it. But I do feel like the tools got, I wouldn't say really good, they got better. Yeah. That's my bias talking. Wes Bos I think we nailed this prediction because Cursor, VS Code, Antigravity, Chrome's MCP, Puppeteer, all of these agents now have the ability to take the UI into account, both like screenshotting It, both taking videos as well as like clicking on things. And that whole loop, I feel like makes the debugging step and like prototyping step a lot better. ([Time 0:13:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9985910e-45d5-4e33-988c-ac97a0ab2353)) - **Use AI To Unstick Learning** - Use AI assistants as learning and unblocking tools to explore unfamiliar domains and get unstuck quickly. - Scott and Wes report AI helped them learn new stacks and hardware tasks they otherwise wouldn't have attempted. Transcript: Wes Bos That's that's actually a funny, a funny question that I've asked myself a lot of times is that like, would you go back to a point where we didn't have any of this AI stuff for coding? And I would probably say, yeah, I was like, I was, I was very happy. Yeah, I was, I was skilled, very happy with where we were. I enjoy a lot of these new tools as well. And I know I love using them and I think it's great. And I'm not like pooing them at all, but I also would be totally happy if stuff ever popped up either. Scott Tolinski Yeah, I will say that I've, uh, I think if you use the tools correctly, not that we need to go in on this, but like, yeah, I feel like I've learned a lot more this year than I have in years past Because these tools. No kidding. They can unstick you a lot. Wes Bos Yeah, yeah, that's true. And they can put you in spots where you might not have been able to do things, you know, like I did some hardware projects this year where I probably would not have been able to do that. Right. You know, writing a little bit of C++ or just simply knowing where to go and what tools to use and to go next. ([Time 0:15:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7058c3a2-955c-451c-8679-3661e1c624c5)) - **Framework Choice Is Eroding Slowly** - Framework choice may matter less as AI better ingests docs and code, but adoption lags and niche libs still confuse agents. - Both hosts feel tools improved, yet edge-case libraries still stump AI in practice. Transcript: Wes Bos So AI tools will get better at ingesting documentation, understanding which version of a library you're using, React versus Svelte or whatever. I don't know. I put a question mark behind this one because I'm not sure if framework matters less. What do you think? Scott Tolinski I don't know if framework matters less. I do feel like the other parts of this got absolutely correct. The tools got so much better. Opus 4.5 can write perfect Svelte 5 code every single time, no back and forth whatsoever. And that's because of one, the model got better. But two, also there's even before the model got better, there was things like the MCP servers that can do auto, like, there's so much better ways of interacting with the AI. I think that it did. But whether or not this one was lagging behind, funny enough, I did not look at our predictions review before writing our predictions for next year. And I wrote word for word, framework choice will matter less because of AI. And now I'm looking at this, I'm like, Oh, man. So I probably wrote this one in the first place, because this is the something that I hope, I hope that we can pick the tools that are best for the end result, rather than the tools that are The most popular. This is me, you know? So I don't know. Maybe this one was a fail in terms of that. Framework choice probably does matter less, but I don't think people have caught up to that. Wes Bos No, no. Like, I think it's gotten a bit better with Context 7, MCP, but I still don't feel like it's there. Like, I've been trying to use this JavaScript framework called manifold for doing 3d renders. It's similar to like something called open SCAD in the 3d space where you can just like great things and merge them and extrude them like a 3d program you would for printing and whatever. And it just, I want, it's so much better, but it just AI sucks at it. And it's fully typed in all of this. And I just cannot get it to, to do better. So I should, it's probably been about six months since I've played with it. I should bring it back now and see. ([Time 0:16:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2d7ff778-43ad-4ade-91a8-bf66900876c1)) - **AI Browser Booked A Flight By Mistake** - Scott tested Perplexity's Comet and used it to nearly book a flight automatically by pasting a flight number. - He trusted the agent through checkout and later realized the flight time was a painful 6 a.m. Transcript: Wes Bos So the way that we thought about this is like, what does coding actually look like? Right. You have sitting in an editor, you have this like new agent UI that a lot of these tools are trying to push on you. And a cursor just by default now goes to the agent tab instead of the code tab, which is kind of obnoxious. And all the other tools have something similar to this. And GitHub is going absolutely ham on trying to shove all of the stuff into GitHub and down your throat. I don't know. Are these becoming as mainstream as we thought they would? I certainly find them to be useful where you can go on GitHub and say, hey, review this or grab this, grab this thing. But I don't know that that's the UI that is the absolute killer UI. What do you think? Scott Tolinski I think that they have become more reliable and more mainstream. I do think that has happened. And the latest stuff where you can assign different agents to different things that they announced the GitHub universe, all that stuff is great. So I personally think that yes, these things did become normal and more mainstream. Yes, I will say that. Have they become great? I don't know. I've used them to fix some issues here and there. Am I using it to do most of my coding? No. Wes Bos Next one we have is the AI browser will become inevitable. And I'll throw the next one in there as well, which is OpenAI will launch a browser. So OpenAI obviously shipped their own browser. It was absolutely awful. Very slow. I don't know anybody that's using it. It's very slow, very limiting, very frustrating to use. But they're trying to cram you into the hole that they want the web to be. Plus, like what, Scott changed browsers, what, six or seven times? Scott Tolinski Maybe more than that. Wes Bos Yeah. What browsers did you use this year let's let's count them like for longer than a week no just like what did you what did you dip into there was obviously the open ai browser which is i don't Scott Tolinski Even what is it called comet i'm gonna i know that's that's perplexities i'm gonna be real with you i did not ever download the OpenAI browser, not even for half a second. But I did use Dia AI browser. I did use Perplexities Comet for a good long time, AI browser. I used Arc for a long time. I used Chrome, Chrome Canary. I tried to use Firefox for just a little bit. And then I've been using Helium for the past month and a half or so. And really liking Helium is where I'm sticking for now. I will say with the comment browser is great. There's a lot of I didn't want to use it for my daily browsing, because of privacy concerns. They're sending a lot of information to perplexity. And I just I don't want them to have access to my bank account and all this information. But like when I wanted to do a little bit of things here and there, it was super useful. Like for instance, if I wanted it to put me on like CJ was flying to New York, I wanted to be on CJ's flight, I copied his flight number, I pasted into perplexity. And I said, put me on this flight. It got me all the way to the checkout screen. Now, I did just go ahead and put myself on that flight and I clicked buy and then later realized that CJ is CJ likes early flights. That flight was at six in the morning. And I'll never forgive myself for just yellowing onto that flight because that was that was crazy. ([Time 0:21:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c2414399-4ea2-4f77-94be-c6a004afa4c7)) - **Relative Color Became Safe To Use** - CSS relative color syntax reached full browser support and enabled richer color systems and dynamic contrast calculations. - Scott calls it his MVP for the year and describes practical utilities he built with it. Transcript: Wes Bos Um, relative color syntax. This is where you can take a color, whether it's an HSL, RGB hex, whatever, and you can use from, and then you can split it out into RGB values, HSL values, and you can increment, decrement Them, whatever. Beautiful syntax for being able to calculate a color. And Scott, you said you wanted that 94% usage. It has been in every browser. It actually reached baseline 2024, meaning that it's been in every browser for a full year now. And I think that it's very safe to use. Scott Tolinski I love relative color syntax. This might be my MVP for the year. Stamp it. I love this API. I've built color systems that respond to light and dark mode, transparency. I built a crazy color contrast, automatic color contrast thing the other day with this syntax. Man, this syntax is underutilized and just all around fantastic. It is greatly improved my CSS in just ways that I cannot express on this podcast. ([Time 0:27:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/32958bb1-f0e4-43a0-bfe9-eed8d6bd8fc6)) - **Plain CSS Is Making A Comeback** - Vanilla CSS adoption rose as new CSS features reduced reliance on JS and preprocessors for many teams. - Both hosts ship more plain CSS and feel the language is regaining power with new native features. Transcript: Scott Tolinski I do think this is happening, whether or not it has become like a movement or what I do think this is happening. No, all the time, I do more and more people shipping some of this latest stuff. I personally don't even add post CSS to anything. I don't add CSS to anything. I wrote my own utility framework. I wrote, you know, utility framework. You can tell I wrote that because that's me. That's the type of thing I would say. Yeah, I think, man, CSS is just so capable now and is only getting more capable. So I do think it is making a comeback to just use this, whether or not it is ubiquitous. Wes Bos I think we're still early in a lot of these features, whether it's people still need to support older iPads. You know, like that's probably the biggest. Talk about IE back in the day. The biggest pain in supports butt is old iPads. People don't upgrade their iPads or they simply cannot. You know, like everybody has an iPad that's nine years old and they use it every now and then. ([Time 0:29:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/63752547-3f83-4e25-a61c-f73685521714)) - **CSS Mixins And Functions Near Reality** - CSS custom functions and mixins specs solidified, enabling functions to return values and mixins to return blocks of CSS. - The hosts expect these primitives to make complex CSS logic far more maintainable once browsers implement them. Transcript: Wes Bos Mixins and function specs solidify. So there was rumblings at this time last year of adding both mixins and functions to CSS. So similar to if you've used SAS before, where you can apply a whole bunch of CSS to a selector, or you can make custom functions that will be able to take inputs and return values. So the CSS mixins is now a solidified spec. It's still in draft mode, but it's been updated as much as about a month ago as of recording. And the spec has gone forward with only defining custom functions as part of one. So then the idea of mixins, which I pretty sure I believe we did a whole show on it, but I'm pretty sure mixins is being able to apply multiple functions to one. Is that right? Scott Tolinski I'll be real with you. Even as far as going back as SAS goes, I never had a firm grasp on difference in usage between mixins and functions because at the end of the day, you're just looping in a bunch of complex Logic. I guess functions are for defining values and mixins are defining chunks of CSS or am I? Wes Bos Yeah, I'm just reading through the spec really quickly and that's what it is. Functions are for calculating a single value. And a mix in is for returning multiple values from that. So if you wanted to have like a mix in to make like a syntax button, you know, or it has a specific border radius and a drop shadow and a background and calculate that, that's where a mix in Would work. So in order to have those things, you need functions to be able to actually uh take inputs and then return values and then you can get more complex with it so it looks like um the spec has Been firmed up and it looks like in next year we're going to start seeing this land in browsers i'm pretty excited about that yes yes i am very stoked for this i'm going to use this all the Scott Tolinski Time there's so many things i would encapsulate in a little function instead of having to write some massive amount of calc and who knows what inside of my css ([Time 0:30:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ba15ea2e-bfd0-4e26-b508-936809659044)) - **Style Queries And CSS Ifs Landing Gradually** - Container style queries and CSS 'if' rules began shipping (Chrome-first) enabling conditional styling based on container state. - The feature is useful but still needs broader support to reach full potential. Transcript: Wes Bos So true yeah just be able to put that because those things are so hard to reason about and just being able to put that in a nice function which is simple is going to be key but on the same regard, We also predicted that container queries are going to be shipping everywhere. Sorry, not container queries, container style queries. Container queries have been in the browser for a couple of years now. Style queries, which is you'd be able to essentially, and essentially it was if statements against container properties. So you can say like, if this container has a flag of dark, or if this container has a variable that's set to subtle, then do the following things. So we got that, that shipped in all of the browsers. However, we also now have if statements added to the browser. It's only in Chrome right now. It's limited availability, the idea of if statements are not just applied just to container queries but you can also apply them to to media queries and what else feature queries so that's Scott Tolinski Still a ways out but i'm pretty excited about it yeah yeah i'm i'm stoked about it too there is a point, though, when you when you wonder, like, what can be done just by adding classes or Not or whatever. And the if statement part is very, very interesting. I did a little bit of a deep dive on it at some point. So yeah, it is a cool, cool API container style queries. You said the style queries shipped in every major browser yep let's look at the can i use for that no i'm seeing that they are partial support yeah partial support refers to only working Wes Bos On css custom properties in a style query so it only works but not in firefox at all oh you're right why did i see that okay yeah wrong about that yeah well not in Firefox unfortunately but Honestly I think that all of the stuff needs to land before we like fully see it you know so we need if statements style queries functions mixins all of the essential CSS is becoming a programming Language. And then we're going to be able to do some serious, serious stuff with this. Yeah. Scott Tolinski Yeah. I was going to say that would be low key, a groundbreaking or ground shifting API to have dropped in all major browsers. I'm stoked for style queries. ([Time 0:33:13](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e9cefcb0-dff0-48dd-affb-c82e385a4ac1)) - **Vertical Centering Jokes Won't Die** - Old developer jokes like vertical centering persisted despite CSS getting trivial ways to center elements. - The hosts note endless one-liners exist and urge developers to stop recycling the same joke. Transcript: Scott Tolinski Vertical centering jokes will stubbornly persist. Nailed it yeah people still make jokes about this stuff man it's so easy to center anything vertically horizontally whatever there's billion different one-liners to do it it's not Wes Bos Hard folks so you can vertically align something on a block level element which means a div you don't use grid or flexbox or anything with the align content center. You don't have to say that joke anymore. Yes. Stop doing that joke. Scott Tolinski Although it doesn't work in CSS battles because every single time I try to use it in a CSS battle, it fails because of however their renderer is doing it. There's something weird, yeah. ([Time 0:35:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/82905fc4-cd75-4e39-81c7-dbaf96331f9d)) - **VS Code Improved But Cursor Leads Completions** - VS Code improved agentic features but still lags Cursor on aggressive tab-completion and some agent ergonomics. - The hosts stress different users want different 'eagerness' knobs and Cursor currently leads in tab completions. Transcript: Wes Bos So we predicted VS Code will reach feature parity with cursor? I don't know that that happened. So the agent agentic stuff in VS code got very good. However, I feel like the and I know that the tab completions, which is one of my favorite AI coding things, is just not there. And I've been DMing with a bunch of people that work on VS Code and being like, I've sent them videos. They turn those videos into it. I have Code and Cursor up, and I was like, these are the four things I want to do. And I just, Cursor does it beautifully. And Tabs does exactly what I want. It jumps to where I want. And then VS Code forgets a closing curly bracket, which is so frustrating. It's it just it's not quite there um they're obviously working on it but just cursor is still miles ahead on the tab completion so i i don't think we got that one it's gotten a lot better Scott Tolinski Though i'll tell you that vs code's gotten a lot better yeah i think the tab completion is not something i use that much i'm gonna be honest with you i don't yeah i don't i don't know if it's Because zed doesn't have as good of tab completion as cursor and i used vs code primarily before moving to zed and so like maybe i just haven't had the really good tab completion in a little While. Wes Bos Yeah, that's the thing. It's like, I've got so used to having very good tab completion in cursor. But then you talk to people about that work on these things. And they say, it's really hard because some people think it's too eager. Some people think it's not eager enough. Some people hate it. Some people can't live without And it's all of this like everybody's just kind of at a different spot with it. Like even sometimes I have to turn it off when I'm doing some types of code. I have to turn it off because it's just way too aggressive as to what I want. It's like I maybe can predict everything you want to do here and then it's like no no I'm just trying to put a border on the one thing at a time please yeah but then other times I'm like well Yeah keep going I want you to do it so I don't know like I need I almost need like a knob where I can like yeah yeah yeah how how eager should this be how much but ([Time 0:36:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/638fea2e-cd76-462a-b7e8-4465de8df671)) - **Bun Took Nonstandard Path And Was Acquired** - Bun continued adding unconventional features and was acquired by Anthropic (not launching a hosting PaaS). - The acquisition reflects Bun's value for high-performance JavaScript runtimes within AI companies. Transcript: Wes Bos Sucked, and everyone went back to cursor, which is really frustrating for them. And they got jewels, too. Scott Tolinski Like, what are they doing? It's classic Google stuff. But you'd think by now that they would figure this out. Wes Bos Yeah. And they have IDX, which is now Firebase Studio. So Google has at least three IDEs, identical IDEs. Scott Tolinski The forks will continue until more morale improves next one here is for react ecosystem react compiler drops babel we said that because babel is ancient technology at this point uh That the react compiler would drop it no that's not true it did not happen did not happen um is anybody using the react compiler i'm not that's's a good question. Wes Bos As much as people talk about it and as much as people say like rendering performance and whatever and there are lots of situations you can point to where like this thing is slow, like GitHub Pull request is a really good example. I think most like relatively simple React apps don't have that problem or people don't even know that they are re-rendering unnecessarily i think it's people don't know not that they Don't have that problem yeah they don't know what they know um but then we also had one here is react server components will pop they'll hit their stride um and we'll see a lot of universal Rsc components meaning that like my prediction here was that you'll see people ship React server components that include the client logic, the server logic, the styles, API calls, All of the stuff bundled into one component that you can do. And I will argue that that did not happen. Yeah. In fact we just had a massive security issue with react to shell um which was basically every react website that used server components so not every react website but every every react Website that used server components my own website was on waku obviously all the next js websites out there anything that's built on parcel with react server components they were all Scott Tolinski Effective and it was a pretty big pretty big uh it allowed ability yeah remote execution remote code execution with just a post request so i mean it was pretty yeah so pretty rough which Wes Bos Is honestly i don't i think that will sour a lot of people on react for quite a while and it sucks and it's I don't want to like point fingers and I don't think anyone should be dancing on the Grave um because that this happened I know a lot of people like it was very serious and I'm sure a lot of people had a very bad week that sucks And I think that will be a bad bandaid. People are waiting for something like this to happen to React, you know, because of all the crazy APIs in React server components. Scott Tolinski Yeah. So a bit of a bummer. Yeah, a bit of a bummer there. Next one, Remix emerges as something new. That happened. Remix emerged as something new. Whether or not that's being used by anybody i don't know uh it's not out yet it's not out yet i was not at remix conf i don't know the timeline here oh no you should go back and listen to our Episode on uh the remix i forgot west stuff enters my brain and just exits if i'm like I'm not picking up Remix. I don't have room for it. Wes Bos Remix announced what it is going to be, and it has nothing to do with React anymore. And it is a sort of a full stack, entirely JavaScript. It still uses JSX. It's all based on web standards. We guessed it might be a Shopify-related product. That is not the case. We guessed that it might might be a rack server components based headless commerce thing that is not the case at all has nothing to do with react anymore and yeah next one is react native Will have its time i think react native is kind of its own thing like it gets used a ton where it's needed but where people don't need to build native apps they're obviously not going to Scott Tolinski Be using it so i don't know if we nailed that one either yeah i think it has i think react native continues to get better expo continues to get better uh the more i see from react one thing React native i think just added css better css support a CSS grid or something. Oh, really? They have been crushing. Yeah, I think they also felt the hype around links. I follow a number of React Native folks on Twitter, and I do see kind of constant hype around various things in the React Native ecosystem. Wes Bos So links, for anyone listening, people are probably trying to Google this. It's LYNX. This is a React Native competitor from ByteDance, which is the owner of TikTok. And they they launched their own version of React Native, which powers a lot of the big, big apps that they have in China. Yeah. Links is really cool. Scott Tolinski I'll tell you that. Keep your eye on links. Next one. Tanstack start and Tanstack will pop. Yes, we nailed this one. Tanstack has got hype around it nonstop, all the Tanstack stuff. I've been seeing major things move to Tanstack. And I think they have a lot of it's funny. I mean, the Tanstack ecosystem overall has, in my mind, legitimized quite a bit but also yeah grown quite a bit and then they just launched hand stack ai which i think is gonna be huge um Wes Bos Which we knew about early by the way yes that's what tanner told us after the episode we did with him he told us what it was going to be that's pretty cool so just like a standardized ai sdk That can be used in javascript php and what else is it i think python which is really interesting they're going with like every language you can use this sdk in not just like tanzac is known For like yeah it works with react but it also works with svelte and it also works with. But now he's going outside of that and just working with every single language, which I think is the move, because then you can, if we standardize on these ideas of like responses and Requests, and the whole thing is going to be beautifully typed, I'm pretty excited about that. Scott Tolinski Yeah, I'm going to do some tutorial content on this Tansi AKI stuff. Really stoked about it. I had some S stuff. So SvelteKit gets more granular data loading. They did. That happened. They did not get islands or they did get some kind of hydration control. They didn't get the island stuff, but they did get more granular data loading with remote functions and they're dope. So that is component level data loading. Yes. I also wrote local first apps will take off. And I do think they have had quite a bit more hype behind them. I don't think it's reached critical mass where people really understand the capabilities of local data caching and how great that is. And then, ([Time 0:39:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6c4fd1e6-7859-4292-8835-a1fee06b78a5)) - **RSC Security Issue Slowed Adoption** - React Server Components faced a serious security incident in 2025 that slowed adoption and eroded trust. - The hosts expect the incident to sour some teams on server components for the near future. Transcript: Wes Bos Much as people talk about it and as much as people say like rendering performance and whatever and there are lots of situations you can point to where like this thing is slow, like GitHub Pull request is a really good example. I think most like relatively simple React apps don't have that problem or people don't even know that they are re-rendering unnecessarily i think it's people don't know not that they Don't have that problem yeah they don't know what they know um but then we also had one here is react server components will pop they'll hit their stride um and we'll see a lot of universal Rsc components meaning that like my prediction here was that you'll see people ship React server components that include the client logic, the server logic, the styles, API calls, All of the stuff bundled into one component that you can do. And I will argue that that did not happen. Yeah. In fact we just had a massive security issue with react to shell um which was basically every react website that used server components so not every react website but every every react Website that used server components my own website was on waku obviously all the next js websites out there anything that's built on parcel with react server components they were all Scott Tolinski Effective and it was a pretty big pretty big uh it allowed ability yeah remote execution remote code execution with just a post request so i mean it was pretty yeah so pretty rough which Wes Bos Is honestly i don't i think that will sour a lot of people on react for quite a while and it sucks and it's I don't want to like point fingers and I don't think anyone should be dancing on the Grave um because that this happened I know a lot of people like it was very serious and I'm sure a lot of people had a very bad week that sucks And I think that will be a bad bandaid. People are waiting for something like this to happen to React, you know, because of all the crazy APIs in React server components. Scott Tolinski Yeah. So a bit of a ([Time 0:40:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/231341eb-f0e3-4609-9ac5-e297204966e9)) - **TanStack Grew Beyond React** - TanStack gained significant momentum and released cross-language AI tooling (Handstack AI) to standardize responses across platforms. - The hosts expect broader adoption because Tanner aims for multi-language SDK support. Transcript: Scott Tolinski Yes, we nailed this one. Tanstack has got hype around it nonstop, all the Tanstack stuff. I've been seeing major things move to Tanstack. And I think they have a lot of it's funny. I mean, the Tanstack ecosystem overall has, in my mind, legitimized quite a bit but also yeah grown quite a bit and then they just launched hand stack ai which i think is gonna be huge um Wes Bos Which we knew about early by the way yes that's what tanner told us after the episode we did with him he told us what it was going to be that's pretty cool so just like a standardized ai sdk That can be used in javascript php and what else is it i think python which is really interesting they're going with like every language you can use this sdk in not just like tanzac is known For like yeah it works with react but it also works with svelte and it also works with. But now he's going outside of that and just working with every single language, which I think is the move, because then you can, if we standardize on these ideas of like responses and Requests, and the whole thing is going to be beautifully typed, I'm pretty excited about that. Scott Tolinski Yeah, I'm going to do some tutorial content on this Tansi AKI stuff. Really stoked about it. I had some S stuff. So SvelteKit gets more granular data loading. ([Time 0:44:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4fa549eb-07b3-4419-a781-7ac6307faae6)) - **Local-First Apps Gained Traction** - Local-first apps and local caching gained traction but haven't reached critical mass among mainstream teams. - The hosts note more awareness exists but many still misuse or misunderstand the term. Transcript: Scott Tolinski They did. That happened. They did not get islands or they did get some kind of hydration control. They didn't get the island stuff, but they did get more granular data loading with remote functions and they're dope. So that is component level data loading. Yes. I also wrote local first apps will take off. And I do think they have had quite a bit more hype behind them. I don't think it's reached critical mass where people really understand the capabilities of local data caching and how great that is. And then, you know, when that happens, everyone's just going to act like it's some brand new thing. But I think that is still to happen. But man, local data has definitely taken off. I think more people know what the word local first is, even if they're using the term incorrectly. ([Time 0:45:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/30e4502f-46c2-4ad4-9bc4-e3251c5ab45e)) - **Vite Stayed Dominant And Expanded** - Vite remained the dominant dev tooling choice and continued expanding into a broader platform (V+ ambitions). - Wes and Scott trust Vite's consistent delivery and opt-in Rollup successor rollout. Transcript: Scott Tolinski It is. Wes Bos It was the default in 7. What? Scott Tolinski Was it not? I don't know. I'm so... There's too many things, Wes. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Wes Bos I was upgrading something the other day, and I went through the breaking changes. Scott Tolinski Rolldown. How to try roll down you have to use veat npm roll down veat latest to use roll down the current docs say that veat is planning to integrate roll down to use roll down you have to use roll down Veat. It is still considered experimental. Wes Bos Yeah, you're right. 7.0, they rolled it out and you have to opt in. It's 8.0, which is in beta one as of today, where it will default to roll down Vite. So probably in a couple months, we'll see that be the default. Scott Tolinski I've been using it on all of my projects and it's been absolutely awesome yeah it's great yeah there's also one thing that we missed on this is vt plus so v plus was what is it give give me The rundown oh man i'm gonna be honest i don't have a good answer for that question the whole idea behind v plus is not v just not being like the dev tool and bundler and builder that it is Wes Bos Right now, but it also is your, your linter, your formatter, your test runner, uh, UI testing, all basically absolutely everything. And that's their, their way to make money, right? They, they raised a whole bunch of money, whether that will be the case or not, we will see, but I don't know. Part of me is just like, yes, please just give me something that does everything in one and then the other part of me is just like no i want to be able to pick my tools and maintain this sharded Scott Tolinski Javascript landscape that i love i've grown to love so i i want to use v for everything and i already have only been using v for everything As long as it stays amazing, you know, and doesn't, Wes Bos And they've proven that to me over what, eight versions where I've upgraded happily every single time without issue. And as long as it just keeps getting better and I'm not bogged down by anything, then yes, I think that's the move. Scott Tolinski And the VEAT team has always delivered consistently. So yeah. ([Time 0:48:47](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0981f1e2-619b-413c-8c83-1e67cff3b049)) - **Favorite Quiet Travel Fan** - Wes Bos recommends the compact WOOZOO fan as a travel and bedroom favorite because it has quiet two-axis motion and turn-offable LED. - He praises its airflow, size, and the ability to switch off blue LEDs while sleeping. Transcript: Wes Bos Sick pick that i just remembered the other day and this is not a very good winter pick but i don't care it's this is something i went to your house and i slept in your guest room and you had A woozu fan yeah and it's this fan that goes it's a fan that goes on two axes and it's tiny and it's nice and quiet and it has my favorite feature error which is you can turn the freaking blue Leds off while you're sleeping so we got one of the little ones and then we got another one that's on like a pedestal and they're so compact but they still they put out, man. They put out and it's like the best fan I've ever had. And I've been so happy with it. So next year, once you're getting a little toasty and you're like, we need a new fan, go to Costco or whatever and grab the Wuzu fan. They're unbelievable. Scott Tolinski And I'm a I'm a fan noise kind of guy. So I like a little fan on at all times, especially when I'm going to sleep. Yeah, me too. Wes Bos I have like a little USB sound machine that I travel with because I just, I don't like when it's dead quiet. ([Time 0:52:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7e546084-908f-46b8-9f1d-2a1d88856c6c)) - **Handheld UV Light Finds Hidden Messes** - Scott Tolinski picked a small UV black light and uses it to find tiny items, stains, and hidden marks around the house. - He finds it useful for locating lost pills and unseen highlighter marks on carpet. Transcript: Scott Tolinski A little UV black light. It's like a little, almost like a little flashlight black light i got it i got it from why do you hold it like you're a cop yeah that's actually a good question that is how i hold it when i use It though yeah yeah no i i've been using it actually uh well i've been using it to clean clean like in the kitchen or something like that i'm like oh man you see everything with this i actually Got it for my skin, believe it or not. Wes Bos So wait, what does it do? Scott Tolinski It's basically a really high-powered black light. And you see what? You see every little crumb ever. You can find all kinds of stuff. I lost a pill last night, and I was like, I knew it was here. And then I was like, oh, let me bust out the black light I turn it on and that pill just blew like bright white it was like I found it instantly and it's so good for finding little stuff like That or like our daughter had drawn on the carpet with like some kind of highlighter or something and we could barely see it I turn on that that black light and all of a sudden it's like right There. Now we can clean it better. I've been finding so many little use cases for this thing. And it's $9, this little black light flashlight. I've been using it to do all kinds of just like cleaning around the house or whatever. ([Time 0:54:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c714f8d8-27a9-4260-8b02-ee8440bc9250))