Version Snapshot & Stability Legend

Verified against @tanstack/react-start v1.168.x — July 2026.

Read this before anything else

TanStack Start moves fast, and a lot of what you’ll find by searching is already out of date. Two things to know before you read another page of this book.

First: the version number lies to you. Start ships inside the TanStack Router monorepo and shares its version line. 1.168.x is not a maturity signal — it’s just the monorepo’s current build. Start’s own docs still say “Release Candidate” as of this writing, even though the framework has been called “feature-complete” since late 2025. Treat it as production-usable, but still settling — not the same guarantee as a library on a stable 2.x.

Second: it moved off Vinxi. Early Start used Vinxi and an app.config.ts file. That’s gone. Current Start is a native Vite plugin, configured in a normal vite.config.ts. If you find a tutorial using server.preset or app.config.ts, it’s describing the old architecture.

timeline
    title TanStack Start's architecture, in order
    2024 : Vinxi-based : app.config.ts, server.preset
    2025 : Vite-native rewrite : vite.config.ts, tanstackStart() plugin
    Sept 2025 : v1 Release Candidate : "feature-complete", API stable
    Apr 2026 : RSC lands : experimental, non-breaking addition

Old vs. new config, side by side

If you see code like the left side below, mentally translate it — the right side is current.

app.config.ts

// OLD — Vinxi-based, no longer how Start works
import { defineConfig } from '@tanstack/start/config'

export default defineConfig({
  server: { preset: 'vercel' },
})

vite.config.ts

// CURRENT — native Vite plugin
import { defineConfig } from 'vite'
import { tanstackStart } from '@tanstack/react-start/plugin/vite'
import viteReact from '@vitejs/plugin-react'

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [tanstackStart(), viteReact()], // order matters: start before react
})

The scaffolding CLI changed too: @tanstack/create-start is deprecated in favor of the unified @tanstack/cli.

The stability legend used throughout this book

Every chapter opens with a version-pinned callout like the one at the top of this page. Beyond that, watch for these three labels on individual features:

Label	Means	Example
🟢 Stable	Documented, part of the RC feature set, safe to build on	Server functions, file-based routing, selective SSR
🟡 Experimental	Works, is documented, but the API may still change	React Server Components (Part 9, Appendix A)
🔴 Community / inferred	No official Start-specific docs — adapted from another framework’s guidance or our own synthesis	Zustand/Jotai per-request patterns (Part 4)

When a chapter uses 🔴, it’s telling you to verify against current docs before you build production code on it — the pattern is reasonable, but nobody upstream has committed to it staying that way.