Show HN: Bhvr, a Bun and Hono and Vite and React Starter
65 comments
·April 27, 2025pavlov
I think you might want to elaborate on why this stack is good.
Right now it’s summarized as “typesafe fullstack monorepo”… But that’s so dense, it’s practically just three buzzwords together. A more realistic description of the pros and cons would be welcome.
I’ve never heard of Hono, and I’d personally need a lot more convincing to pick an unknown framework for a new app.
hombre_fatal
Koa was next gen Express when TJ Hollowaychuk made it. Used first class promises to have real middleware like “response = await next()”
Hono is basically next gen Koa: zero dependencies and made to work in additional contexts like in CloudFlare Workers.
- Express deps: https://npmgraph.js.org/?q=express (lol)
- Hono deps: https://npmgraph.js.org/?q=hono
Node web servers are all so similar (you write ~identical code no matter which one you use) that tie-breaking on a dep diff this big is reasonable.
nopelynopington
[dead]
liveafterlove
Hono is pretty good js a runtime agnostic router. On their site:
Works on Cloudflare, Fastly, Deno, Bun, AWS, or Node.js. The same code runs on all platforms.
How does compare to ultrajs? Or just use hono client side jsx, its pretty much like react already.
stevedsimkins
I appreciate the feedback! This stack does kinda assume you already know what Hono is but I can definitely flesh it out a bit more, and perhaps show some code to demonstrate it.
johnhamlin
I had the same reaction to Hono, but now see it has 23k+ stars on GitHub. Learn about a new JS framework everyday!
mathgeek
As to whether or not this is a good thing is left as an exercise to the reader. ;)
null
VyseofArcadia
I mean, I also don't know Bun and Vite. I've at least seen React. You should probably just explain the whole stack.
Etheryte
This is like saying a Java library readme should start with what the JVM is. It's fine to not know these things, but the majority of this comes with the territory. Right now it sounds like you're simply not the target audience. The Github readme includes a link to all of the major bits, so I don't really see the problem.
pier25
If you've never heard of Bun or Vite you're clearly not the audience for this.
Philpax
Agreed - I have no idea what this stack is good for, or how it competes against other full-stack efforts. Would love to know more!
easygenes
bhvr is the opposite end of the spectrum from the Big Three: Next/Rails/Django hand you batteries, bhvr hands you a rocket fuel can. One Bun binary replaces npm + Node + Jest, Hono routes run everywhere from Cloudflare Workers to bare-metal Bun, and a shared types/ folder gives you end-to-end TS safety—zero extra runtime, zero config. You lose turnkey SSR, auth, and ORM magic, but if you care more about installing, hot-reloading, and deploying in under 60 seconds than about convention-heavy kitchensinks, bhvr is the leanest full-stack starter in 2025.
pier25
Hono is great. It's a shame it all depends on a single maintainer and there's zero official funding afaik.
flashblaze
Using Hono RPC would immensely help this. I'm using a similar kind of setup for my upcoming micro SaaS and the API integration has been a breeze
krashidov
Hmm do you know how it compares to https://trpc.io/ ?
flashblaze
I haven't worked with trpc, but looking at the docs everything looks to be pretty tightly coupled together In Hono RPC, you just have to replace the fetch api call with the RPC client and you're good to go
stevedsimkins
Thanks for the rec! Definitely gonna check this out
easygenes
For about a year Hono has had mature RPC. So bhvr has a type-safe RPC story without tRPC: export your AppType, import it in the browser, and hono/client gives you fully-inferred calls plus Zod-backed validation — in a ~3 kB helper instead of tRPC’s heavier client and adapters.
You still won’t get auto-generated hooks or WebSocket subscriptions, but for plain REST/JSON the old “hand-rolled fetch” drawback is gone, leaving only edge cases like hooks, real-time, and IDE scalability as the remaining trade-offs.
crsr
Nice! I built something similar yesterday. But decided to use elysia instead. They have a tRPC like client with full TS support called eden.
threatofrain
Elysia is sooo underrated. IMO they could improve their marketing by emphasizing they're compatible with other environments and not just Bun.
tough
would love to see it if open source!
ilrwbwrkhv
Not very good. The type safety thing doesn't work well when you are using it across different folders.
tough
what do you mean by across different folders here? I was thinking about using elysiajs so this seems important
tough
would this hack help? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/79494287/is-it-possible-...
ilrwbwrkhv
I would reconsider using Elysia. I was also very excited by it and I thought it would be great but it has got errors and issues with different library versions and things like that. Also the whole Eden thing doesn't work for me for whatever reason. I have a monorepo. Typescript keeps complaining. Also if everything is defined in a single file, then it works well. If it's in different files, it breaks the whole type side of things.
dev_l1x_be
Is there a stack for loading html safely from the backend that has proper error handling? I would love to use HTMX but not sure how to do (for starting) error handling in it. I need to render some backend generated charts mostly, maybe adjust the time (datepicker). Is there something for this or just use vanilla?
bpiroman
I really don't understand why typescript exists...
koakuma-chan
I never use templates because it’s much faster to create a new project from scratch than use a template and remove all the unnecessary things.
stevedsimkins
[flagged]
nnx
Would it make sense to ReactRouter SSR though Hono?
If not, great opportunity for bvrrr.
stevedsimkins
I prefer to do static hosting for my client, so bit of bias there. Not on the SSR hype train.
rohan_
Nice- why hono over Fastify?
liveafterlove
Runtime agnostic, why get stuck with one js runtime?
pezo1919
Interested in that too.
stevedsimkins
Thanks!
Fastify is great, I just like Hono more ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
slt2021
great work and very neat repo, love it!
Do you have a plans to add the ORM?
stevedsimkins
Thank you!! No plans as of yet just to keep it open ended but we’ll see.
Hey all! I've been using this stack personally for a while now and decided to automate it a bit by turning it into a template I can reuse. Hope others might find it helpful!