Three years ago I wrote a backend boilerplate, pushed it to a private repo, and forgot it existed. This week I needed a quick REST API. Instead of the usual heavyweight setup, I went spelunking through my old GitHub repos and there it was. 2021 me, Express, TypeScript, a decorator-based routing idea I was weirdly proud of. The problem: it was frozen in 2021. Node 14, Express 4, dependencies that hadn't been touched in years. So I sat down with Claude Code and rebuilt it properly: → Node 22, Express 5, TypeScript 5, strict everything → Vitest + supertest, CI on Node 20 & 22, multi-stage Docker → MongoDB, Auth0 and Sentry as opt-in modules — set an env var and they turn on, leave it out and they never load → Health checks, graceful shutdown, request correlation IDs → Then packaged the whole thing as a CLI and shipped it to npm Meet 🏎️ Chassis — a lightweight, decorator-driven Express + TypeScript starter. One command, zero config to boot: npm create chassis my-api The pitch is simple: if you love NestJS's ergonomics but not its weight for a small service, this is the featherweight option. Nest-style controllers on plain Express ~10 small files you can actually read, not a framework you have to learn. It even ships with an AGENTS.md so your AI coding agent writes code that matches the conventions out of the box. MIT, free, and I'd genuinely love feedback (or a ⭐). github.com/dvd90/chassis https://lnkd.in/ecFyk_aX #TypeScript #NodeJS #OpenSource #BackendDevelopment #ClaudeCode
