Front-End Fire

This week the VoidZero team shipped Vite 8. It’s using Rolldown under the hood and boasting 30x faster builds, full plugin compatibility, integrated devtools, and a searchable registry for all plugins.
Co-host Jack has officially joined Netlify as a Principal Developer Experience Engineer and announces the launch of Netlify Start. Start a new Netlify project with a prompt on the site, and see it built and deployed in minutes, and keep iterating on it from there.
The Node.js team is changing their release schedule so that every release now (both even and odd) numbers will be an LTS release, and beginning in 2027, it will be named release 27, just to make it easier for everyone.
Timestamps:
0:57 - Vite 8 is out
8:04 - Jack joins Netlify and Netlify Start
12:21 - Node.js is changing their release cadence
20:10 - The dictionary sues OpenAI
23:18 - Vercel v. Cloudflare on X
31:20 - Quite the tweet from Sam Altman
39:18 - What’s making us happy
News:
Paige - Vite 8 is out
Jack - Jack joined Netlify and launches Netlify Start
TJ - Node.js is changing their release schedule
Lightning News: 
The dictionary sues OpenAI
Quite the tweet from Sam Altman
Vercel vs. Cloudflare on X
What Makes Us Happy this Week:
Paige - Afrin nasal spray
Jack - Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die and Project Hail Mary
TJ - One Piece live action series and college basketball
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
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JavaScript framework Eleventy has been renamed Build Awesome, 1.5 years after joining the Font Awesome stable. The name change precedes Build Awesome Pro, which will offer premium features alongside the features Eleventy users know and love. Today the Awesomeverse got a little awesomer.
The VoidZero team also open-sourced Vite+, which is a unified toolchain and entry point to web app development that manages runtime, package manager, and frontend toolchain all in one.
Since being acquired by Cloudflare, the Astro team had their first big release with Astro 6.0, which includes a new dev server and build pipeline powered by Vite’s environment API so it can run the exact same production runtime during development. Other upgrades include a built-in Fonts API, request-time content, and a new experimental Rust compiler.
Timestamps:
0:54 - Eleventy becomes Build Awesome
5:40 - VoidZero announces Vite+ alpha
10:38 - Astro 6.0
15:39 - Mozilla is working on a big Firefox redesign
17:53 - The Chrome team is looking for feedback on focusgroup
20:31 - Updates to TanStack AI
22:21 - OpenClaw gripe with lack of permissions
27:22 - Moltbook get acquired by Meta
30:05 - What’s making us happy
News:
Paige - Astro 6.0
Jack - VoidZero announces Vite+ Alpha
TJ - Eleventy becomes Build Awesome and the original Font Awesome Kickstarter video
Lightning News: 
Mozilla is working on a big Firefox redesign
The Chrome team is looking for feedback on focusgroup
Upgrades to TanStack AI
OpenClaw gripe with lack of permissions with v2026.3.2
Moltbook is acquired by Meta
What Makes Us Happy this Week:
Paige - Foundation TV series
Jack - Taxes done with Firefly III
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

This week's a non-AI episode!
It’s been a minute since we last discussed Bun, but the team is back with a new release. In v1.3.10, the REPL’s completely rewritten in Zig, barrel imports are optimized, and the JavaScriptCore engine got upgraded for big perf gains.
Npmx, a fast, modern browser for the npm registry has reached alpha version in less than 2 months of existence. Its goal is to make it easy for devs to find, evaluate, and manage npm packages, and boasts cool features like the ability to compare packages and even launch demo environments directly from package READMEs. 
Solid 2.0.0 jumped straight from experimental to beta this week, and it introduces changes like: async is first-class, derived state is a primitive, dev guardrails to prevent foot guns, and a DOM cleanup model.
Timestamps:
2:04 - Bun v1.3.10
8:39 - npmx
13:03 - Solid 2.0 beta
22:42 - PlanetScale bought Drizzle ORM
23:46 - Safari is getting customizable <select>s
27:26 - Fire starter
30:15 - What’s making us happy
News:
Paige - npmx
Jack - Solid 2.0 beta
TJ - Bun v1.3.10
Lightning News: 
Safari is getting customizable <select>s
PlanetScale bought Drizzle ORM
Fire Starter:
Navigation API is baseline available
What Makes Us Happy this Week:
Paige - Kytin Parasole shoes
Jack - Immich
TJ - Stratechery’s coverage of the Anthropic v. DoW saga
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’s episode is all about Anthropic. First up, Anthropic unveiled Claude Remote Control, which will let users continue a Claude session back on their personal machine from a phone, tablet via the Claude mobile app. Watch out OpenClaw.
Anthropic continued making news by refusing to bow to the Department of War’s request for “unrestricted use” of its AI for military purposes, including domestic surveillance and fully-autonomous weapons. We’ll let you know if those defense contracts get revoked or not.
On a lighter note, a developer at Cloudflare rebuilt Next.js with AI as a drop-in replacement using Vite... in one week. That’s right! $1,100 worth of tokens, access to Next’s docs and test suite, and Claude Code, and Bob’s your uncle!
Timestamps:
1:09 - Claude Code Remote Control
7:52 - Anthropic vs. the DoW
17:46 - Cloudflare rebuilt Next.js with AI
27:17 - Oxfmt beta
29:31 - style-components adds RSC support
30:52 - Controlling 7000 vacuums with Claude Code
36:12 - What’s making us happy
News:
Paige - Claude Remote Control
Jack - Anthropic vs the DoW (Dept of War)
TJ - Cloudflare rebuilt Next.js with AI
Lightning News: 
styled-components adds RSC support
Accidentally controlling 7000 vacuums with Claude Code
Oxfmt has reached beta
What Makes Us Happy this Week:
Paige - A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms TV show
Jack - SyncThing
TJ - TanStack Start
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 survey results reason, and the State of React 2025 results are in! 
As in the past, Next.js continues to dominate as one of the most used frameworks, but TanStack Start is one to watch. Other honorable mentions include: Zustand, Vite, and (most importantly) Front-end Fire tying for fifth place in the podcast section. Thank you, listeners!
Google has a new proposal called WebMCP, which is a way to define structured tools for agents visiting a site, ensuring they can perform actions with increased speed, reliability, and precision.
And instead of complicated build processes to convert HTML to markdown for AI agents’ benefit, Cloudflare now offers real-time content conversion when AI systems request pages from any Cloudflare site. That’s pretty great!

Timestamps:
1:03 - State of React survey results
12:22 - WebMCP
24:27 - Markdown for AI agents
34:27 - TypeScript 6.0 beta
38:00 - Chrome gets split view
41:09 - What’s making us happy
News:
Paige - Markdown for AI agents
Jack - WebMCP
TJ - State of React 2025 survey results and Claude Receipts
Lightning News: 
TypeScript 6.0 beta
Chrome gets split view
What Makes Us Happy this Week:
Paige - New Girl TV show
Jack - Gridfinity
TJ - The Residence
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