We Rebuilt Next.js with AI in One Week (vinext Explained)

In this episode of This Week in NET (the second this week focused on building with AI), host João Tomé is joined by Steve Faulkner, Engineering Director at Cloudflare, to discuss how he rebuilt a Next.js-compatible framework in just one week using AI. The project, called vinext, began as an experiment and evolved into a working proof of concept.

We explore what AI-first development looks like in practice, how coding agents were used to rewrite and test large API surfaces, and what happens when you treat dependencies as something you can regenerate rather than maintain manually.

The results were surprising: faster local builds, smaller bundles, deployment to Workers with a single command, and a total AI token cost of roughly $1,100.

We also discuss:

• Using voice-to-code workflows (SuperWhisper + local models)

• AI reviewing code multiple times

• Whether AI-assisted rebuilds will become common

• What this means for 2026 and beyond

Mentioned blog posts:

• How we rebuilt Next.js with AI in one week