Express gives full control over how you structure your project and organize your code—but that freedom becomes a liability in large projects with multiple developers. You want the structure and resourcefulness of Django, without turning Express into something like NestJS or losing its simplicity. Fast, seamless development is great—but not at the cost of drowning in abstractions.

Express Backend Kit is my solution:

1. Opinionated but flexible: Provides a default stack and workflow, but doesn’t abstract away your choices. You decide which resources, services, and workflows to use.

2. Database freedom with Drizzle: Use any database you want while keeping typing and validation clean and automatic. Drizzle Studio integration makes development easier.

3. Authentication your way: Fully configurable with Better-Auth, giving you control over how auth flows work.

4. Object storage & dev tools: Choose R2 or S3, and get a development navigator for your objects.

5. Documentation out-of-the-box: Scalar integration for auto-generated API docs, keeping your project easy to understand.

6. Developer-first features:

   • Flexible main engine selection
   • Clean, Tailwind-powered React emails with dev preview
   • Choice of testing tools: Vitest or Jest
   • Fully typed system with clean validators that handle validation failures automatically

Goal: Provide structure, resourcefulness, and peace of mind in development—without taking away the freedom and clarity that make Express great.