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Routes And Render Modes

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github-actions[bot] edited this page Aug 10, 2026 · 5 revisions

Routes and render modes

A route is a URL + render mode + metadata + offline strategy. Render mode is a per-route property. SEO is enforced by the build, not described in a guide.

v1.0.0 As of 2026-08. Stable API — semver from here (Upgrading).

The canonical shape

export const config = defineRoute({
  render:     'isr',                  // static | isr | ssr | stream | spa
  revalidate: { tags: [tag.post] },
  prerender:  () => db.posts.slugs(),
  offline:    'precache',             // precache | runtime | network-only
  hydrate:    'visible',              // idle | visible | interaction | never
  budget:     { js: '40kb', lcp: 2000 },
  meta:       ({ post }) => ({ title: post.title, description: post.excerpt,
                               og: { image: post.cover }, ld: ld.Article(post) }),
});
Aspect Rule
Projects to router entry, prerender list, sw.js precache/runtime rule, sitemap + RSS row, <head> + JSON-LD, per-route budget check
Owns render mode, hydration timing, metadata, offline strategy
Never touch the DB directly, hold business logic, or omit meta.description in site/ — that is a build error

Five render modes

Mode Behavior Use
static built once, served as a file marketing, docs
isr static + background regen on tag/TTL catalogs, profiles
ssr per-request full render fresh SEO pages
stream static shell flushed instantly, holes streamed default for app pages
spa shell only, client fetches dashboards behind auth
Surface Default Allowed
site/ static static, isr, ssr
app/ stream stream, spa, ssr
api/ n/a no rendering at all

A mode outside a surface's allowed set is a build error, not a runtime fallback. Surfaces and their boundaries: Project layout.

Why stream is the app default

An authed page needs fresh data and fast first paint. ssr gives freshness and a slow TTFB (the whole page waits for the slowest query). spa gives an instant shell, a spinner farm, and no HTML for anything. stream gives both halves: shell now, data as it resolves.

export default function Dashboard() {
  return (
    <Layout>
      <Header />                                {/* in the first flush */}
      <Suspense fallback={<StatsSkeleton />}>
        <Stats />                               {/* streamed when the query resolves */}
      </Suspense>
      <Suspense fallback={<FeedSkeleton />}>
        <Feed />                                {/* independent hole, independent flush */}
      </Suspense>
    </Layout>
  );
}

Solid's fine-grained reactivity is what makes this cheap:

Property Consequence
No VDOM streamed HTML is patched into place; nothing re-renders to reconcile
Signals, not component re-execution a resolved hole updates the exact DOM nodes bound to it
No hydration pass over the shell the static shell costs 0 hydration work — a <Suspense> boundary hydrates only its own island, only when its hydrate timing fires
Compile-time templates the shell's JS is markup-shaped, not a component tree to replay

In a VDOM framework a streaming shell still pays for hydrating the whole tree, which is why streaming there buys TTFB but not TBT. Here it buys both.

Independent holes each resolve their own queries; the tier-1 request memo means three holes reading the same query hit Postgres once.

hydrate timings

Value Wakes when Use
idle after first paint, on requestIdleCallback default in app/ — above-the-fold interactivity
visible the island intersects the viewport below-the-fold lists, comment threads, charts
interaction first pointer/focus/key event on the island menus, modals, popovers, dropdowns
never not at all — server HTML is final static islands, rendered markdown, badges

Hydration is per-island, never per-page. A blown budget.js is a build failure, so islands cannot quietly accumulate.

Budgets

Per route. budget.js in bytes, budget.lcp in milliseconds.

Check Source of truth
Per-route JS bytes budget.js on the route; measured from the real bundle graph
LCP / CLS / TBT headless Lighthouse against the built output, median of N runs
Lighthouse SEO + a11y scores minimum thresholds in app.config.ts, defaults 100 / 95
Precache size total sw.js precache set, see PWA and offline
Regression budgets ratchet — the recorded baseline can tighten, never loosen silently

A blown budget is a build failure, not a warning:

x verify
  ✓ typecheck            ✓ import boundaries      ✓ migration drift
  ✓ lint                 ✓ tests (6 types)        ✓ contract diff
  ✗ budgets
      site/pricing   js 61kb > 40kb   (chart.js via shared/ui/button.tsx)
      app/reports    lcp 2400 > 2000

Failures name the cause — the transitive import that added the bytes — because "bundle too big" without a chain is not an instruction. x verify --json emits the same content machine-readably.

SEO enforcement

Concern Enforcement
meta.title missing on any route build error X_SEO_NO_TITLE
meta.description missing on a site/ route build error X_SEO_NO_DESCRIPTION + fix: add description to meta in <file>
Description outside 50–160 chars build error, with the measured length
Duplicate title/description across routes build error — duplicate meta is a ranking bug, not a style issue
og.image missing on a shareable route build error; the generated fallback OG image must be opted into explicitly
Broken internal link build error, resolved against the route table
Missing alt on an <Image> build error
Canonical URL emitted for every route from the route table; never hand-written
robots / noindex a route-level field, so "we shipped staging to Google" is impossible without editing the route

A convention that isn't a build error doesn't exist. SEO is the archetype — every SEO regression in history was a documented convention someone forgot.

Typed JSON-LD

meta: ({ post }) => ({ /* ... */ ld: ld.Article(post) })

Helpers, typed against schema.org shapes:

Helper For
ld.Article posts, news, docs pages
ld.Product catalog and detail pages with price + availability
ld.Organization the site's own identity, emitted once
ld.BreadcrumbList derived from the route's path segments
ld.FAQPage Q&A blocks
ld.SoftwareApplication app landing pages
ld.Event dated, located events
ld.Recipe ingredient + step content

A missing required property is a type error, not a Rich Results Test failure discovered next week. Output is a single <script type="application/ld+json">, deduped per page.

Generated from the route table

Artifact Derived from Notes
sitemap.xml all indexable routes + prerender() results lastmod from the entity's updatedAt; auto-split at 50k URLs into a sitemap index
robots.txt route robots fields + app.config.ts sitemap reference included
rss.xml / atom.xml / feed.json routes tagged as feed items one declaration, three formats
llms.txt site/ route titles + descriptions machine-readable site summary for agents
404 / 500 required routes missing one is a build error

Nothing here is a plugin. Deleting a route removes it from the sitemap in the same build.

i18n routing

Feature Behavior
Locale routing /, /es/, /de/ from the configured locale list — no per-route wiring
hreflang full reciprocal set emitted per route, including x-default
Per-locale static output each locale is prerendered separately; no client-side locale swap on site/
Missing key renders ⟦key⟧ in dev, fails x verify in CI
Numbers / dates / money Intl.* with an explicit IANA timeZone and ISO currency; never a hand-rolled format
Localized metadata meta receives locale; a locale missing a description is the same build error

See I18n, Timezones and dates, Money.

Image pipeline

<Image src={post.cover} alt={post.title} sizes="(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px" priority />

One <Image> shape, one capability contract, stated once — in docs/idea/07-rendering-seo.md → Image pipeline: variants, srcset, inlined dimensions, the blur placeholder, the @ultimat3/core runtime, and the ImageTransformDriver seam AVIF/WebP variants come from. Restating it here would let the two copies drift.

Rules

  • render and offline are declared on the route or defaulted by surface. Never inferred at runtime.
  • revalidate.tags are typed handles from the tag graph — an unknown tag is a compile error (Caching and invalidation).
  • Routes never touch the DB directly. Data comes from a query.
  • A route holds no business logic. That is a service, behind an action.
  • prerender() must be deterministic and bounded — it is a build input.
  • Never hand-write a canonical URL, a sitemap entry, or sw.js.

Ultimate — v1.1.0 As of 2026-08. Stable API, semver from here. MIT licensed.

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