Curator notes on stacks worth shipping, each one picked, tested and documented.
63 posts
A hands-on July 2026 scorecard of ten open-source and source-available Next.js SaaS and AI starters, ranked across six axes with real GitHub stars and exact licenses.
A hands-on July 2026 review of Convex, the reactive backend and database for Next.js: five deploy paths, real free-tier cost math, the FSL license fine print, and where it loses to Supabase and Neon.
ShipGarden's hands-on June 2026 review of Inngest v1.34 (v1.34.0 stable shipped June 29, JavaScript SDK v4.11.0 on npm) as the open-source durable-execution platform for Next.js apps. Five deploy paths, real cost-per-10k-executions math, an honest compare-side against Trigger.dev v4, the SSPL license question, and where v1.34 still bites.
ShipGarden's hands-on June 2026 review of Refine v5 (@refinedev/core@5.0.12) as the open-source React framework for an admin or internal-tool starter. Five deploy paths, real per-month costs, an honest react-admin / Appsmith / ToolJet comparison, and the v4-to-v5 migration story you should plan for.
ShipGarden's hands-on June 2026 review of Trigger.dev v4 (v4.4.6 stable, v4.5.0-rc.7 in flight) as the open-source background-jobs platform for Next.js apps. Five deploy paths, real cost-per-10k-runs math, an honest read against Inngest and Convex, and where v4 still bites.
ShipGarden's hands-on June 2026 review of Medusa.js v2 (v2.17.1) as the open-source headless commerce backend for Next.js. Five deploy paths, real cost-per-100-orders numbers, payments via Stripe Paddle and Polar.sh, and the v1-to-v2 migration story you don't want to volunteer for.
Hands-on June 2026 review of the LlamaIndex.TS RAG starter for Next.js. The starter still works, the project is officially deprecated, and the deploy-paths matrix below has three options that still ship. Honest cost numbers, vector store picks, and what to point a fresh codebase at instead.
ShipGarden's hands-on review of CopilotKit as a Next.js agent UI in June 2026. The setup walkthrough, the four comparison axes, three deploy paths, and where it loses to Vercel ai-chatbot and Mastra.
Curator review of Twenty CRM v2.14.0 (June 2026): the open-source Salesforce alternative now with built-in AI agents. Four fork lanes for the solo founder.
Open SaaS 0.24 by Wasp shipped June 11, 2026 with 14.7k stars and the most batteries-included free SaaS starter on the open-source shelf. We curated it into a ShipGarden gallery entry with three solo-founder paths: ship-as-is, replace the Wasp pieces, or escape the DSL. Honest trade-offs, including when Open SaaS is the wrong pick.
Mastra is the open-source TypeScript agent framework hitting 25.2k GitHub stars and v1.42.0 (June 12, 2026). We curated its starter into a gallery entry with three real deploy paths: clone the repo, one-click on Vercel, or ship as a deployable Next.js app via Totalum. Trade-offs in plain English, no hand-waving.
An AI agent app is six moving parts: a Next.js shell, a model SDK, a tool-calling layer, a durable job runner for long tasks, a vector store for memory, and a streaming UI. Wire those and you can ship something genuinely useful in a weekend. The hard part isn't the model; it's the plumbing around it that keeps a slow, flaky call from taking your whole app down. Here's the stack and the four traps that eat the most time.
