The year is 2026, AI agents have taken over the developer mind-share, tech stacks have become the latest developer flex, are you "moving fast and breaking things" ? are you "shipping" ? and developers have settled more and more into tribes. Along what those lines have been drawn, I can't say...not because I'm above the noise or "better" than it but simply because it moves fast, much too fast for me.

"But this is tech, everything moves fast" I hear you say and yes, this is true but there's ways tech moves quickly that can be an indicator of good things and others that are indicators of...less good things. The speed I'm talking about is the latter, a speed born out of trend-hopping and influencers, the speed that's about capturing audiences/users instead of building software, y'know, the fun part.

In 2025, most new developers have no real context for the tools they're using and why they've been chosen, you'd be lucky if they new how the tool they used worked beyond a surface level knowledge enough to get them in the door and pass long enough in a sea of others just as lost as they are. This is the sector that modern software tries to capture...build the best LLM integrations, that way Claude is more likely to suggest your tool, show off the latest thing you've shipped with all your shiny new tools, this is obviously the best stack, look at the MRR grow.

What's AdonisJS got to do with it

AdonisJS, is a pastiche of a time the "old guard" of the industry have forgotten, That good software is built on solid foundations, clear constraints and genuine innovation.

AdonisJS has flown under the radar of every trend cycle somehow - not because it isn't good but because whenever the question "why isn't there a laravel/rails" for javascript, one of two things happens.

• The person posing the question hasn't done their due dilligence

• Someone is trying to sell you on their own brand new solution (some of them have the gall to be VC backed)

This isn't ideal, this isn't the world we were trying to build where laziness, self-inflation and heavens no, capitalism were at the forefront of what we were trying to build.

On point one, you do not have to search too far to come up on AdonisJS, I found both NestJS and AdonisJS doing a quick google search. I discovered them only 4 years ago before Google decided to slap me across the face with AI Overview.

On point two, I have no issues with making money, I like money but I don't think I like it enough to disregard what I'm building for the sake of getting it.

I've only recently started building with AdonisJS, after initially choosing NestJS over it. I wanted structure but not the structure AdonisJS provided at the time - I needed structured flexibility, I was in a project that was moving quickly and I was one of the founding engineers at the time so I needed something with guidelines but not something made a crucial decision like rendering on our behalf, I had stepped in at a transition point for the project, the hands that had cooked the broth had left half-way and I was tasked with salvaging what was left...I was Remy saving what Linguini had done.

I picked AdonisJS back up at the tail-end of 2025, I was entering into a company at the time and I needed something to stimulate my brain for my upcoming project (working on 2 things at the same time helps me for some reason) so I got to building with it and I felt...alive, for the first time in a while I felt alive. I wanted to build everything with it, I wanted to build ANYTHING with it and didn't matter what, I was buzzing for ideas to build...If you'd approached me with a startup idea in this period you'd probably had convinced me to build it even if it was Uber for horses.

In February 2026, AdonisJS released their next big version, AdonisJS 7 had landed and by God was it beautiful...They hadn't missed a beat on what was happening in the ecosystem at all, despite being alive for a decade at this point. Their annoucement blog post was chok full of goodies for the next cycle of building that don't ruin what you already know but build on it, improve it, innovate on it.

The Beacon

Adonis reminds us of what it's software was really about, building good software with good practices with the right constraints. I remember when the saying "Good software is built under the right constraints" was a popular thing (maybe not where you are but certainly where I am it was) and that's what Adonis was/is/will continue to be, a reduction of choice, a constraint on tooling, using what you've been given instead of building the next big starter kit that couples together the top 5 trending VC backed SaaS applications to do simple tasks and calling that "moving fast" or "shipping", that isn't shipping, that's moving product.

Adonis V7 stands as a beacon to those of us in the Web Dev world that are tired of glueing together dozens of tools that aren't designed to interact each and every time we want to build a product, It's dedicated to those of us who are tired of the wasted mental power spent trying to grok layers and layers of glue code to achieve the simplest of features, It's a reminder that in this age of selling everything to everyone, that some of us still want to build software the right one

A Reality Check

AdonisJS is an open-source project and it's run by a dedicated team of a few very talented and intelligent individuals, some of whom I've had the pleasure of conversing with in their discord server when I've had troubles and in light of this, AdonisJS is a project that needs support and lives. As of 2026 the BDFL of the Project Mr. Harminder Virk has announced AdonisJS Plus as a way to better support the project.

"Oh I see, you have a problem when other people do it but don't have a problem here ?" I don't have a problem with this because I understand the vision and I see the necessity for it. AdonisJS plus doesn't require a buy in for something as simple as authentication otherwise you're left in the wild west. Adonis Plus exists for the people that want to build faster and want to do it with tailor made AI tools and components that plug right in, they've given us the building blocks to build the universe ourselves and now they want to give us some tools to guide us in the right direction...If we want them and that is a good business model for open-source technology because I know that when the time comes and I'm in a position to suggest technology, Adonis would be the first on my mind and if I can convince my employer to give a contribution whether by sponsoring on purchasing plus ? why wouldn't I

Closing Thoughts

In a world filled with hype and noise, choosing peace and sanity becomes more and more a conscious choice and as development shifts more towards AI generated code with human review, choosing to build technology as an artisan with the goal of provided not shareholder value but human value and quality software is the most powerful choice a developer can make, and AdonisJS is making those choices easier to make every day.

So if you've felt the web has been moving in an odd direction or you just want to have fun building again, check out AdonisJS - The batteries-included TypeScript framework