The things I actually reach for

not because it is best — because the JS tooling assumes it, and fighting that costs more than it wins

the contract gets written and poked before a handler exists. Half the integration bugs I do not have started here

git, nvm, and a prompt I have stopped tinkering with

for anything shaping data for a client. Types at the boundary or the boundary is a rumour

server components mean the fetch waterfall happens where the data lives, not over the wire

if the shape is known, take the constraints. Schemaless is a decision to enforce the schema in application code instead, and that code is always worse

binary and typed where both ends are mine; boring and cacheable where they are not

auth is a place where being clever is a liability. SSO and MFA are solved; my version would be worse and I would own it forever

add, dual-write, switch reads, drop. Slower to plan, and it is why nobody notices a schema change

less about deployment than about deleting "works on my machine" as a sentence anyone can say

genuinely not my favourite. It is where the work lives, so I use it well rather than complaining about it in standup