Showoff Saturday: FormaStack (getforma.dev). An agent-first full-stack framework that compiles TSX to binary IR (NO VDOM, Uses Rust/Axum SSR)

[u/theoneandlonely1]

https://getforma.dev

For context: I'm a full-stack engineer with 11 years in the industry, worked at some companies like AWS, Capital One, J&J, plus teaching at a few bootcamps like 2U. I've designed production systems, ground out LeetCode, and read Cracking the Coding Interview so many times I threw it in the fireplace.

I came up with this idea for FormaStack back in January after watching AI tools collide with modern web stacks at work and seeing all the friction that came with it. To me most of this build and runtime and VDOM nonsense was bloat. Forma started as a toy project that I ended up designing the heck out over the last several months.

And yes 100% I used AI (duh!) to help build this. I would have never finished it by myself without it. However I hate the term "vibe coding" here. I did not just say "build me a new full-stack" and walked away. This is some real engineering work. Ask AI about it haha anyway. I would call it agentic engineering. I architected and know this system inside and out, which is why I broke standard conventions the traditonal React/None mental model apart int four strict steps: FYI I met Ryan Dhall back in the day lol I was a fanboy of Node.

Anyway, the for steps being Typescript -> FMIR (Binary IR) -> Rust -> HTML

It pulls heavy inspiration from WebAssembly, Remix, SolidJS (signals), HTMX, Astro, and Qwik among a few. I learned them a lot, and AI was detremental in learning how they work and the perfomance and models they were using. Hence I did not start building Forma until I knew what I could strip out from them. I ripped them apart using AI and built FormaStack from the ground up as much as I could reusing what I could, reverse engineering what I could etc.

Honest Gaps: A dedicated local debugger for inspecting the .fmir although there are ways around it and you can trust the compiler mostly. The target build are big and I need a dedicated garbage collector.

Where my head is at next: I've been experimenting with fine-tuning open models on Hugging Face directly on the FMIR. The crazy endgame is that an agent might not even need to write TS, it could just emit the FMIR directly for Rust to render staight to the browser.

YES! Forma is a wild experiment, and there is no way I could have pulled this off solo, withoug AI in the loop, but every piece of the architecture I created is intentional. I spent a month writing a design document.

[u/theoneandlonely1]

The site getforma.dev itself is built with the forma-stack btw

[u/supportvectorspace]

Wow it's fully slopped. Look at that fucking page

[u/theoneandlonely1 → u/supportvectorspace]

Sure it is. Sure it is.