The Power in Pragmatism

by Tanner Linsley on May 22, 2025.

The web ecosystem moves fast. Frameworks evolve, paradigms shift, and tools get rewritten in pursuit of better ideas, or sometimes just cleaner abstractions. That kind of exploration can be valuable, but it can also come at the cost of leaving developers behind.

I've chased purity before. Type-safety, for example, is a hill I've been more than willing to climb. And I still believe some of those pursuits are worth it. But I've also learned that pragmatism usually wins in the long run, especially when you're trying to build tools that developers can trust, adopt incrementally, and grow with.

Foundations That Don't Move

One of the most exciting parts of building TanStack Start and TanStack Router is that they aren't tied to any one framework. They're framework-agnostic by design, built on the belief that UI frameworks are just rendering tools, not foundations your entire app should depend on.

That decision wasn't made to hedge against future shifts. It was made to keep the core ideas of routing and app composition flexible, testable, and broadly useful, regardless of whether you're building with React, Solid, Vue, or whatever's next.

Because of that, TanStack tools aren't in need of a pivot. They're already designed to adapt to where frameworks go.

The Spirit of TanStack Query

This philosophy isn't new to us. TanStack Query became what it is by solving real-world problems with data-fetching, caching, and invalidation, without trying to own your app architecture. It made working with async state better, no matter your stack.

TanStack Start and Router carry that same spirit forward: composable, type-safe primitives that solve specific problems really well, while giving you complete control over how deep you go.

Composability Is the Strategy

Some tools aim to provide the entire full-stack experience out of the box. That works for many developers, and there's nothing wrong with it. But TanStack Start is built differently: it's designed to scale with your needs, not ahead of them.

You can use just the router. Or add server functions. Or bring in the mini query cache. You can even replace pieces with your own. That's not just flexibility, it's composability by design.

We believe abstractions should be optional and interchangeable. That's how you future-proof a toolset.

What Comes Next

The ecosystem is shifting again, and that's okay. Some are exploring new rendering models. Some are doubling down on server-first patterns. Others are rethinking what a framework even is.

We welcome that. In fact, we've already built for it.

By focusing on primitives instead of platforms, TanStack tools grow with the web, not away from it. We're not chasing clean slates. We're building on what works, refining what doesn't, and staying focused on helping developers build great apps today and tomorrow.

We're not here to convert you. We're here to support you, wherever you are, and wherever you're headed.