Ask HN: What's the ideal stack for a solo dev in 2025

I’m a marketer turned dev. When I built my first SaaS 3 years ago, I went with ROR because it seemed like the ideal stack for a solo dev.

But with all the development in AI, I wonder, is it still the best choice? Most AI tools have JS or Python integration but the Rails ecosystem seems a bit behind.

But at the same time, a lot of the JS ecosystem feels all over the place.

So what tech stack should a solo dev use in 2025?

I'll echo @ejs and say it depends, but I'm a huge fan of Laravel (https://laravel.com/)! The team recently released some updated starter kits (https://laravel.com/starter-kits) as well which are nice (Vue, React, and Livewire)

For the uninitiated, Laravel is an opinionated, "batteries included" stack that lets you get right to the meat of the application without spending time working on authentication, routing, html templating, and so much more.

There are also several (paid) resources the organization provides that allow you to get your app hosted pretty quickly (see Forge and Cloud).

Just use TypeScript frontend and backend. For backend, use Node+Express+TypeScript. If doing anything in ML, create a service in Python, but keep application code in TypeScript.

If you are doing full stack development, this works much better. The npm ecosystem is amazing. You can create common libs, share types, don't have to context switch and all future developers can do some full stack.

This is the boring stuff, but works and scales.

Whatever stack you are most comfortable using.

If all your integrations with AI are via HTTP API's then it does not matter what stack you choose, they all can call API's. Maybe some stacks will have pre-built libraries but really, AI like cursor, copilot or chatgpt can create an AI HTTP API library if that's what you're doing. If you are building AI/ML yourself then you'll have narrower choices of stacks.

If you choose a stack that is widespread and has been around for years, like ROR or python/django, then chances are AI will be better trained to be your helpful assistant that is sometimes wrong.

It is a highly opinionated question. Whatever gives you the oomph to do things.

Generally speaking, typescript everywhere. LLMs know it quite well. If you are doing agentic work, you can do a FastAPI encapsulated python service.