About two years ago I wrote about the tech stack that works for my previous startup. Since then the AI coding revolution happened, and I built PaperFox.ai from scratch on a new stack that is AI-first with much lower cost and maintenance overhead than before. By AI-first, I mean agentic engineering — designing systems and infrastructure where AI agents can operate effectively as first-class developers.
Core Stack
- Next.js with TypeScript and App Router
- shadcn/ui for component layer with Tailwind and Radix
- Prisma + PostgreSQL for database
- AWS S3 for file storage
- Postmark for transactional email
- Stripe for payments
- NextAuth.js for authentication (BetterAuth is used for later projects)
- Inngest for background jobs
Hosting & Infrastructure
- Vercel for Next.js app deployment
- Neon for PostgreSQL database hosting
- AWS for S3 object storage
- Namecheap for domain registration and business email
Mobile
- Electron for cross-platform desktop app
Observability & Testing
- Sentry server errors tracking
- Google Analytics for user behavior and product analytics.
- Playwright for E2E testing
- Vitest for unit tests
- k6 for load tests
AI & Automation
- OpenAI Responses API for LLM usage
- Model Context Protocol for AI agent integrations
- Custom AI skills (some most often used examples):
- blog-image — process and optimize blog images (crop, compress, formats)
- doc-writer — create/update documentation with auto-refreshed screenshots
- fix-sentry-issues — analyze production errors and fix bugs from stacktraces
- github-issue-viewer — fetch private GitHub issues with auth
- resolve-ticket — investigate and resolve helpdesk support tickets
- security-audit — daily security checks on production database
- test-writer — create/update Vitest and Playwright test suites
Coding Tools
- Claude Code $200 max plan.
- OpenAI Codex $20 pro plan.
Development
- GitHub for version control and CI/CD
- pnpm for package management
- Zod for API request and JSON validation
- Husky for pre-commit hooks
- ESLint for code linting
Others
- Fumadocs for docs and blog
- TipTap for rich-text editing
- Google Places API for city autocomplete
- Stripe Connect for marketplace payments
- Custom in-house ticketing system (replaced Zendesk)