Category
Web & API Development
Web platform standards, HTTP, REST and API design — the protocols, methods and architecture patterns behind building and modernising production web services.
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$15 a seat plus the build: what a Sanity and Astro content platform costs in 2026
Headless CMS licence pages are easy to read and easy to misread. Sanity Growth is $15 per seat per month with 25k documents; the increased-quota add-on is another $299. Here is what a Sanity and Astro build actually
Manu Shukla -
Astryx vs shadcn/ui vs MUI: 3 React design systems compared for 2026
Astryx, shadcn/ui and MUI now sit at 9.1k, 119k and 98.4k GitHub stars. Only one is Beta, only one has a price tag, and all three ship agent tooling. Here is the decision, with the numbers behind it.
Manu Shukla -
RBI Digital Lending Directions 2025: the 11-point engineering checklist for lending apps
The Reserve Bank of India (Digital Lending) Directions, 2025 are not a policy document you hand to legal. They specify what your app may read from a phone, where data may sit, and how money must move. Here is the build
Manu Shukla -
Accessibility compliance for Indian SaaS: 6 WCAG 2.2 criteria that decide EU deals in 2026
Most Indian B2B SaaS products are not legally in scope for the European Accessibility Act. Their buyers ask for WCAG 2.2 conformance anyway. Here is how to tell the two apart, and what an audit that survives procurement
Manu Shukla -
Core Web Vitals in 2026: how redBus cut INP 72% and lifted sales 7%
The 200 ms INP threshold has not moved, whatever the 2026 update posts claim. Here is what Google's own documentation says, what redBus changed to lift sales by 7%, and how to find the same wins in your own stack.
Manu Shukla -
EU Accessibility Act 2026: 5 compliance claims that are wrong, and what the legal text says
Compliance guides tell Indian teams that EN 301 549 v3.2.1 is the EAA's harmonised standard, that v4.1.1 lands in October 2026, and that non-EU sellers must appoint an EU representative. The legal text says otherwise
Manu Shukla -
13 Next.js security advisories: which ones break middleware auth and the exact versions that fix them
Four of the 13 Next.js advisories published in May 2026 let attackers reach protected pages without passing middleware. Patching to 16.2.5 does not close all of them, and the reason is Turbopack.
Manu Shukla -
RBI's 1 October 2026 cross-border CNP deadline: what card issuers must build in 73 days
The RBI authentication directions took effect on 1 April 2026, but the cross-border card-not-present provisions have their own date: 1 October 2026. Two separate mechanisms are due, plus BIN registration with the card
Manu Shukla -
Cloudflare Precursor vs Turnstile: which bot defense fits your 2026 stack?
Precursor is Cloudflare's continuous, session-level bot detection for Enterprise Bot Management, live since July 13, 2026. Turnstile is the free challenge widget. This guide shows which to switch on, and when to run
Manu Shukla -
Programmable digital rupee in 2026: a CBDC integration playbook for India fintech builders
The digital rupee stopped chasing UPI on volume and became programmable money. Here is how fintech teams integrate e-rupee wallets, conditional welfare tokens, offline NFC and cross-border CBDC rails in 2026.
Manu Shukla -
UPI's 50 balance-checks-a-day cap: engineering your app around NPCI OC-215 in 2026
NPCI's OC-215 guidelines cap balance checks at 50 per day, account lists at 25, and status checks at 3 per transaction. Here is how to re-architect a UPI app around the limits: caching, webhooks over polling, AutoPay
Manu Shukla -
Agentic UPI payments: how to prepare your app for NPCI's Unified Agent Protocol (2026)
India's NPCI is designing a Unified Agent Protocol so AI agents can be registered and authorised to make UPI payments, pending RBI approval. For fintech teams, prep starts now: identity, limits and logs.
Manu Shukla -
Account Aggregator integration in 2026: consent architecture, DPDP overlap and what the SRO changes
India's Account Aggregator network spans 1,120 regulated entities and 450 million fulfilled consents. A technical guide to the consent artefact, ReBIT APIs, FIU eligibility and the DPDP consent manager overlap.
Manu Shukla -
Next.js 16 migration: async request APIs, Cache Components and proxy.ts, with code
Next.js 16 shipped 21 October 2025 and turns Turbopack on by default, deletes synchronous request APIs, and renames middleware. Here is every breaking change that will stop your build, with the codemods that fix them.
Manu Shukla -
WordPress 7.1 ships 19 August 2026: the iframed editor, apiVersion 3, and why most blocks need no changes
WordPress 7.1 is set for 19 August 2026, with the iframed editor planned for block themes first. apiVersion 3 changes no API, and most blocks need no changes. What actually breaks, and how to test.
Manu Shukla -
ACP vs UCP in 2026: one checkout core, two adapters, and why UCP ships first
OpenAI and Stripe's ACP and Google's UCP now overlap enough that one checkout core plus two thin adapters is the sane build. The March 2026 pullback changes which adapter you ship first.
Manu Shukla -
3 ways to expose legacy APIs to AI agents before the 28 July 2026 MCP switch
MCP's 2026-07-28 spec is the largest revision since launch and it breaks things: the initialize handshake and Mcp-Session-Id are gone. Three ways to expose legacy systems to AI agents, and what each actually costs.
Manu Shukla -
12-week SaaS MVP development in India: what a 2026 seed round actually requires
Seed startups in India raised $478 Mn in H1 2026, up 18% YoY, at a $1 Mn median ticket. A 12-week SaaS MVP has to prove more than a demo. The build plan, the stack costs, and the engineering that survives diligence.
Manu Shukla -
Shopify's Hydrogen rebuild in 2026: 6 frameworks, 1 preview, no customer accounts
Shopify rebuilt Hydrogen with Vercel as a toolkit that runs on Next.js, Astro, SvelteKit and three more. It is the biggest headless change since launch, and the reason most D2C brands should not replatform onto it this
Manu Shukla -
UCP vs ACP vs AP2 in 2026: which agentic commerce standard merchants should build on
OpenAI shut Instant Checkout in March 2026, six months after launch, with about a dozen merchants live. Google's UCP kept expanding. Here is how UCP, ACP and AP2 actually stack up, and what to build first.
Manu Shukla -
Idempotency keys in 2026: how to make REST API retries safe
A timed-out POST can charge a customer twice. Idempotency keys make retries safe. This guide covers the Idempotency-Key header, the IETF draft, server implementation, the race-condition trap, storage and TTL rules
Manu Shukla -
Interop 2026: the cross-browser web features developers actually get this year
Interop 2026 commits Apple, Google, Igalia, Microsoft, and Mozilla to 20 focus areas. After the 2025 cycle lifted the cross-browser pass rate from 29% to 97%, here is what front-end teams can finally rely on this year
Manu Shukla -
RFC 9457 problem details: the 2026 standard for HTTP API errors
RFC 9457 is the IETF standard for machine-readable HTTP API errors, and it obsoletes RFC 7807. This guide covers the five fields, the application/problem+json media type, extension members, multiple-problem handling
Manu Shukla -
RFC 10008: HTTP QUERY Method — First New HTTP Method Since 2010
RFC 10008 published June 15, 2026 gives HTTP the QUERY method — safe like GET, body-carrying like POST. First new HTTP method since PATCH in 2010. What it means for APIs.
Aman Mathur