Front-End Fire

TJ VanToll, Paige Niedringhaus, Jack Herrington

A weekly show that helps you stay up to date on the latest and greatest in the front-end world.

  1. 8h ago

    157: Shai-Hulud Is Back From the Dead

    Next.js is back after a quiet stretch with 16.3, promising "instant" navigations, leaner dev servers, better agent tooling, and faster builds. The TanStack crew keeps shipping too — TanStack Table hit v9.0 and TanStack AI is closing in on v1.0 with tool calling, reasoning, code sandboxes, and memory. Then there's the bad news: a new Shai-Hulud variant compromised a major maintainer and infected a pile of key-value storage and caching packages with over a billion combined monthly downloads. Timestamps 0:00 - Intro1:10 - Next.js 16.39:22 - TanStack AI and TanStack Table 9.015:55 - Another npm supply chain attack27:07 - An update on the Deno v. Oracle lawsuit31:44 - Anthropic announced Claude broke containment too37:41 - Google Earth has to roll back an AI feature39:34 - An interesting Sam Altman tweet46:27 - What's making us happyNews Paige: Another day another npm supply chain attackJack: TanStack AI and TanStack Table 9.0TJ: Next.js 16.3Lightning News Not to be outdone by OpenAI, Anthropic announced Claude broke containment tooAn update on the Deno v Oracle lawsuitGoogle Earth has to roll back an AI featureAn interesting Sam Altman tweetWhat's Making Us Happy Paige: Ride or Die miniseriesJack: Shin Kamen Rider movie and Vibe IslandTJ: OpenAI Shop and Perplexity SupplyThanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. Join us in our Discord, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube. Front-end Fire websiteBlue Collar Coder on YouTubeBlue Collar Coder on DiscordReach out via emailTweet at us on X @front_end_fireFollow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

  2. Aug 3

    156: The State of CSS Is In

    The State of CSS 2026 results are in — Tailwind still rules, AI still can't write decent CSS, and (thanks, listeners!) we made the resources list. CodePen ships its biggest update in years with CodePen 2.0, and a new library called Octane pitches "React's programming model, compiled" — hooks and Suspense with no VDOM and no dependency arrays. Timestamps 0:00 - Intro3:05 - State of CSS 2026 survey20:01 - CodePen 2.032:55 - Octane JS framework38:37 - State of Devs survey 202639:30 - LinkedIn adds a "Seems like AI slop" button42:54 - TanStack rebrand, and a new charting library45:38 - GitHub stacked pull requests52:13 - Opus 554:27 - What's Making Us HappyNews Paige: State of CSS 2026 surveyJack: Octane JS frameworkTJ: CodePen 2.0Lightning News State of Devs survey 2026LinkedIn adds a "Seems like AI slop" buttonGitHub adds stacked pull requestsTanStack rebrand & a new charting libraryAnthropic's Claude Opus 5 modelWhat's Making Us Happy Paige: His & Hers miniseriesJack: The Vampire Lestat miniseriesTJ: Orbit Traveling Tractor Water SprinklerThanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. Join us in our Discord, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube. Front-End Fire websiteBlue Collar Coder on YouTubeBlue Collar Coder on DiscordReach out via emailTweet at us on X @front_end_fireFollow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

  3. Jul 27

    155: OpenAI Breaks Out of its Sandbox

    We dig into how Bun went from Zig to Rust in just 11 days with an army of Claude sessions, check in on Kimi K3 — another open-weight Chinese model closing in on the frontier — and unpack the week's wildest story: an OpenAI model that escaped its sandbox and hacked Hugging Face. Just another normal week in AI. Timestamps 0:00 - Intro3:05 - Kimi K310:58 - Rewriting Bun in Rust20:42 - OpenAI hacks Hugging Face39:48 - App Store number updates42:11 - Meta's new app is set to a song about human extinction46:50 - What's Making Us HappyNews Paige: Rewriting Bun in RustJack: Kimi K3TJ: OpenAI hacks Hugging FaceLightning News App Store app numbers are way up; downloads are notMeta launched a new AI optimism ad set to a song about human extinctionWhat's Making Us Happy Paige: The Bear season 5Jack: The Odyssey movieTJ: Detroit Tigers baseballThanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. Join us in our Discord, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube. Front-End Fire websiteBlue Collar Coder on YouTubeBlue Collar Coder on DiscordReach out via emailTweet at us on X @front_end_fireFollow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

  4. Jul 21

    154: How Not to Drown in AI Code Reviews

    AI agents can churn out code faster than anyone can review it — so how do you keep from drowning? We don't claim to have all the answers, but we dig into practical ways to make AI-generated code less sloppy and reviews less painful — review tools, code-review skills, and the still-irreplaceable habit of smoke testing a PR yourself.  Timestamps 0:00 - Intro0:26 - How to not drown in code reviews49:55 - What's Making Us HappyLinks Anthropic: Recursive Self ImprovementSpotify Engineering: Coding is No Longer the ConstraintCodeRabbitSuperpowersAmelia Wattenberger: how coding used to be how we thoughtWhat's Making Us Happy Paige: Chef's Choice Electric Knife SharpenerJack: Cooper's HawksTJ: Acadia National ParkThanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. Join us in our Discord, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube. Front-End Fire websiteBlue Collar Coder on YouTubeBlue Collar Coder on DiscordReach out via emailTweet at us on X @front_end_fireFollow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

  5. Jul 13

    153: Vercel Wants Your Entire Stack

    Vercel goes all-in on your stack — a Zig-powered Native SDK for building desktop apps, plus Vercel Services to run multiple frameworks as one shared project for monorepo and microservice teams — while VoidZero ships Vite+ in beta to unify the entire frontend toolchain. Plus Safari joins the MCP party and Claude gets a little too chatty in Slack. Timestamps 0:00 - Intro0:59 - Vercel native8:22 - Vite+ beta10:15 - Vercel Services16:50 - Safari MCP server19:20 - Claude Tag27:07 - Museum covers its floor in peanut butter33:41 - What's Making Us HappyNews Paige: Vercel ServicesJack: Vercel's nativeTJ: Vite+ betaLightning News Safari MCP serverClaude TagMuseum covers its floor in peanut butterWhat's Making Us Happy Paige: Dutton Ranch TV seriesJack: BowlingTJ: The World CupThanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. Join us in our Discord, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube. Front-End Fire websiteBlue Collar Coder on YouTubeBlue Collar Coder on DiscordReach out via emailTweet at us on X @front_end_fireFollow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

  6. Jul 6

    152: The Fable Redemption Arc

    Vercel partners with Shopify to rebuild Hydrogen, Anthropic re-releases Fable 5 (plus Sonnet 5) with a beefed-up safety classifier after its government timeout, and Meta open-sources Astryx, its React/StyleX design system Timestamps 0:00 - Intro3:50 - Vercel and Shopify collab on Hydrogen13:11 - A Fable 5 update22:38 - Astryx33:51 - Cloudflare to change its crawler policy43:42 - What's Making Us HappyNews Paige: Fable 5's ban has been lifted & Sonnet 5 is out tooJack: Vercel and Shopify collab on HydrogenTJ: AstryxLightning News Cloudflare to change its crawler policyWhat's Making Us Happy Paige: Pink Starburst Vodka LemonadeJack: Goodr sunglassesTJ: Rail ExplorersThanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. Join us in our Discord, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube. Front-End Fire websiteBlue Collar Coder on YouTubeBlue Collar Coder on DiscordReach out via emailTweet at us on X @front_end_fireFollow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

  7. Jun 29

    151: Fixing AI’s Microservices Problem

    Nx debuts Polygraph, a "synthetic monorepo" that gives AI agents a unified view across microservice boundaries, Deno Desktop takes aim at Electron by compiling web projects into single-binary native apps, and fresh SignalFire hiring data shows engineers holding steady while designers and marketers take the cuts. Timestamps 0:00 - Intro1:41 - Polygraph meta-harness from the Nx folks7:49 - Deno Desktop12:39 - An update on the tech hiring landscape24:42 - Dan Abramov joins Vercel27:01 - Claude Code supports mouse clicks now30:37 - Astro 731:08 - What's Making Us HappyNews Paige: Polygraph meta-harness from the Nx folksJack: Deno 2.9 & Deno DesktopTJ: An update on the tech hiring landscape from SignalFireLightning News Claude Code supports mouse clicks now (i.e. Fullscreen rendering)Dan Abramov joins VercelAstro 7What's Making Us Happy Paige: Dungeon Crawler CarlJack: Bird nestsTJ: ShuffleboardThanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. Join us in our Discord, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube. Front-End Fire websiteBlue Collar Coder on YouTubeBlue Collar Coder on DiscordReach out via emailTweet at us on X @front_end_fireFollow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

  8. Jun 22

    150: The Government Said “No Fable For You”

    Anthropic's new Fable model gets pulled days after launch when the US government restricts foreign access, a fully open-source Chinese model claims Claude Opus-level benchmarks for a fraction of the price, and MDN ships an MCP server to keep AI agents current on the web platform. Plus npm 12's supply-chain crackdown and SpaceX's eye-popping $60B Cursor buy. Timestamps 0:00 - Intro1:27 - Anthropic released Fable and the US government shut it down13:51 - GLM-5.220:16 - MDN MCP Server25:42 - npm 12's breaking changes31:38 - SpaceX bought Cursor for $60B39:13 - What's Making Us HappyNews Paige: MDN MCP ServerJack: GLM-5.2TJ: Anthropic released Fable and the US shut it down days laterLightning News SpaceX bought Cursor for $60Bnpm 12 breaking changesWhat's Making Us Happy Paige: Newest season of Clarkson's Farm and World Cup international fansJack: Portland PicklesTJ: Claude CoworkThanks as always to our sponsor, the Blue Collar Coder channel on YouTube. Join us in our Discord, explore our website and reach us via email, or talk to us on X, Bluesky, or YouTube. Front-End Fire websiteBlue Collar Coder on YouTubeBlue Collar Coder on DiscordReach out via emailTweet at us on X @front_end_fireFollow us on Bluesky @front-end-fire.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel @Front-EndFirePodcast

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Trailer

4.6
out of 5
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About

A weekly show that helps you stay up to date on the latest and greatest in the front-end world.

Information

  • Creator
    TJ VanToll, Paige Niedringhaus, Jack Herrington
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    158
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Front-End Fire
  • Show Website
    Front-End Fire

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