Friday Links #35: Dev Tools, AI & JS Ecosystem Updates
A weekly curated selection of developer tools, AI breakthroughs, framework updates, and notable releases shaping the modern JavaScript ecosystem.
The JavaScript ecosystem never really slows down — it just shifts direction. This week brings a mix of AI-powered developer tooling, performance-focused libraries, experimental frameworks, and practical utilities aimed at improving everyday workflows.
In Friday Links #35, we highlight projects that help developers build faster, ship safer, and explore new possibilities across frontend, backend, and edge environments. From emerging open-source tools to ecosystem upgrades worth tracking, these are the updates that stood out this week.
📜 Articles & Tutorials
Building Next.js for an agentic future
Yes, Learning to Code Is Still Valuable
Potentially Coming to a Browser :near() You
6 React Server Component performance pitfalls in Next.js
Virtual Scrolling for Billions of Rows — Techniques from HighTable
Getting Started with the Vercel AI SDK in Node.js
Loop Performance Anti-Patterns: A 40-Repository Scan and Six-Module Benchmark Study
Reduce the JS Workload with no- or lo-JS options
Tips on How to Pick the Right Icons for Your Website
AGENTS.md outperforms skills in our agent evals
border-shape: the future of the non-rectangular web
An in-depth guide to customising lists with CSS
Loading Smarter: SVG vs. Raster Loaders in Modern Web Design
⚒️ Tools
React Doctor - is an open-source CLI tool created by the Million.js (millionco) team that scans React codebases and automatically detects common issues: anti-patterns, performance bottlenecks, accessibility gaps, architectural flaws, and even critical security vulnerabilities that can quietly slip into production.
SVAR React Gantt - is a modern, high-performance Gantt chart component designed specifically for React applications.
The JavaScript Oxidation Compiler
Blop - A typed language for the web that compiles to Virtual DOM. Blop uses real control flow statements — for loops, if/else — directly in templates, without JSX constraints.
Sciter – Embeddable HTML/CSS/JavaScript Engine for modern UI development
BullMQ - Message Queue and Batch processing for NodeJS, Python, Elixir and PHP based on Redis
TanStack Hotkeys - Type-Safe keyboard shortcuts library with awesome devtools
Mina Rich Editor - A powerful, elegant rich text editor built with Shadcn UI. Experience unparalleled customization, beautiful design, and seamless integration. Built with React, TypeScript, and meticulous attention to detail.
Temporal Playground — an interactive online environment for experimenting with the JavaScript Temporal API, allowing developers to run real code and explore modern date and time handling directly in the browser.
Zerobyte - Powerful backup automation for your remote storage
📚 Libs
voxcss - A CSS voxel engine. A 3D grid for the DOM. Renders HTML cuboids by stacking grid layers and applying transforms.
portless - Replace port numbers with stable, named .localhost URLs. For humans and agents.
react-split-pane - React split-pane component
Basic FTP - FTP client for Node.js, supports FTPS over TLS, passive mode over IPv6, async/await, and Typescript.
Lume.js - Minimal reactive state management using only standard JavaScript and HTML. No custom syntax, no build step required, no framework lock-in.
fp-pack - A functional toolkit focused on type-safe pipelines, not FP dogma, for JavaScript and TypeScript.
tambo - Generative UI SDK for React
⌚ Releases
Biome v2.4—Embedded Snippets, HTML Accessibility, and Better Framework Support
Phaser Editor v5 Beta now available
Emscripten 5.0.2 — the well-established LLVM-to-WebAssembly compiler that enables running native low-level code in Node.js without native bindings — receives internal cleanups, removing legacy Node-specific workarounds that are no longer required.
Hono 4.12 — a lightweight, multi-runtime web framework built around Web Standards, designed to run seamlessly across Node.js, Bun, Deno, Cloudflare Workers, and other edge environments.
Orange ORM 5.2 — a powerful and modern ORM designed for efficient database interaction, offering type-safe queries, clean abstractions, and strong performance across modern JavaScript runtimes.
📺 Videos
TanStack Router - How to Become a Routing God in React
Build Your Own Claude Code with Mastra Workspaces
Build & Deploy AI Agent Workflow Builder using NextJs, Mongodb, React, Prisma, Upstash
How One Engineer and AI Crashed IBM’s Stock Price
My Multi-Agent Team with OpenClaw
OpenClaw Full Tutorial for Beginners – How to Set Up and Use OpenClaw (ClawdBot / MoltBot)
🎤 Talks & Podcasts
No content this week 😢
🗞️ News & Updates
An AI agent running on a $5 microcontroller — powered by just 35 KB of code.
Developer tnm has released an open-source AI agent called zclaw, designed to run on ESP32 microcontrollers with a total firmware size under 888 KB. The agent itself occupies only about 35 KB, while the remaining space is used by the Wi-Fi stack (~388 KB), TLS encryption (~110 KB), and certificates.
The project is written in C using ESP-IDF and FreeRTOS, and can run on affordable hardware like the Seeed XIAO ESP32-C3 board, which costs around $5. At publication time, the repository had already gained 750+ stars on GitHub and is available under the MIT license.
That wraps up this week’s roundup.
As AI tooling matures and JavaScript continues expanding beyond the browser into servers, edge runtimes, and embedded devices, the developer landscape keeps evolving in exciting ways. Try something new, explore the tools that caught your eye, and stay curious.
See you next week with another collection of tools, ideas, and ecosystem highlights in Friday Links #36.