How we rebuilt Next.js with AI in one week

One engineer and an AI model rebuilt Next.js from scratch as "vinext", a Vite-based drop-in replacement deployable to Cloudflare Workers, for ~$1,100 in tokens over one week.

• •vinext reimplements the Next.js API surface (routing, SSR, React Server Components, server actions, caching, middleware) as a Vite plugin, not a wrapper around Next.js output
• •Build benchmarks show vinext with Vite 8/Rolldown is 4.4x faster than Next.js 16 Turbopack, with client bundles up to 57% smaller (gzipped: 72.9 KB vs 168.9 KB)
• •A single `vinext deploy` command builds and deploys to Cloudflare Workers; ISR is supported via a Cloudflare KV cache handler
• •The project covers 94% of the Next.js 16 API surface, verified by 1,700+ Vitest tests and 380 Playwright E2E tests
• •Static pre-rendering at build time is not yet supported, but Traffic-aware Pre-Rendering is planned as an alternative approach