What I look for when choosing a stack

Stack decisions get romantic fast. It is easy to optimize for elegance and end up with a setup that is hard to deploy, hard to hire for, or hard to debug under deadline.

My filter is boring on purpose: can I ship a vertical slice this week, can I host it without ceremony, and can I explain the pieces to another engineer in ten minutes? Next.js, TypeScript, and a small backend or serverless surface usually clear that bar for the work I do.

I also care about escape hatches. If the project needs queues, vector search, or a heavier Python service later, I want seams that can grow without a full rewrite.

The best stack is the one that stays out of the way while the product gets clearer. Novelty is optional. Clarity is not.