Jamstack

Jamstack is an architectural approach for building websites that separates the front end from the back end, serving pre-rendered pages from a CDN instead of generating HTML on a server for each request. The name originally stood for JavaScript, APIs, and Markup, describing the three components of the architecture.

The core idea is that as much of the site as possible should be built at deploy time rather than request time. Static HTML files are generated ahead of time and cached globally on a CDN, which means every user gets a response from a server physically close to them, with no database queries or server-side rendering required. Dynamic behavior -- form submissions, authentication, e-commerce -- is handled through API calls to specialized services.

This approach offers real advantages for many use cases. Static files are fast, secure by default (no server-side attack surface), and cheap to host. Scaling a static site on a CDN requires no configuration. Deployments are atomic and easily reversible. Frameworks like Next.js, Gatsby, Astro, and Nuxt all support this model to varying degrees, making adoption straightforward for teams already familiar with modern JavaScript.

The limitations matter too. Sites with heavily personalized content or real-time data requirements do not fit the pre-render model cleanly. Build times for large sites can be long. The ecosystem of external APIs required to replace a traditional monolith adds integration complexity and vendor dependencies. Jamstack is an excellent fit for marketing sites, documentation, and content-driven projects, but it is not the right architecture for every product.