Architecture · 2016–2024 · Platform Wars

Jamstack

Pre-render + CDN + APIs. The brand cooled; the pattern (static where possible) stuck.

How Jamstack mutated

Jamstack mutated delivery by putting HTML at the edge and admitting dynamic bits can be APIs. The marketing label cooled when auth and personalization refused to stay static. The pattern stuck under names like partial prerender.

static cdn web

Patterns

Silver-bullet architecture

2017–now

Platform Wars

Part of the Platform Wars era (2017–now).

Read the Platform Wars era →

Compare with

vs SPA for Every Page vs Svelte / SvelteKit vs Next.js vs TCP/IP

Practice · 2014–2023

SPA for Every Page

Costly fad

Client-side apps as the only architecture. Great for apps; absurd for brochures.

$ Marketing sites and docs portals shipped multi-megabyte JS bundles for content that wanted HTML. SEO and performance teams spent years unwinding "modern" defaults.

Framework · 2016–now

Svelte / SvelteKit

Stuck

Compile away the framework. Less runtime theater, more shipped HTML — including this site.

Framework · 2016–now

Next.js