As long as npm install and npm run dev worked, I was good to go. Why fix what isn't broken, right?
Well, turns out it kinda was broken. I just didn't realize it.
I've been upgrading my whole stack lately—finally tried Vercel after somehow avoiding it for 5 years (no idea why), moved to Cloudflare for DNS because their email routing is actually insane and the security stuff is just there by default.
The Actual Trigger
I'm a CLI person for everything (GUIs slow me down—except Supabase because I'm not a masochist). When I went to install the Vercel CLI, their docs had the quick copy using pnpm for global installation. Figured if Vercel's advocating for it, might as well follow suit.
The Install Experience Immediately Sold Me
Deleted node_modules, ran pnpm install—faster, cleaner output, way more concise. Then I ran it again and it finished instantly. Like, actually instant.
It hard-links packages from a global store instead of copying them everywhere, so across mistory, Maestri, and Plateman I'm saving gigs of disk space without thinking about it.
npm → pnpm is like JavaScript → TypeScript.
Slightly stricter, way better to work with, and once you switch you can't go back. npm suddenly feels slow and wasteful.
The Swap is Dead Simple
Commands are basically the same (pnpm install, pnpm add, pnpm dev). Only real difference is npx becomes pnpm dlx.
I added these to my .zshrc:
alias pn="pnpm"
alias pni="pnpm install"
alias pnd="pnpm dev"
alias pnb="pnpm build"
alias pna="pnpm add"
alias pnx="pnpm dlx"(Yeah I tried Yarn once for monorepo workspaces, which is legitimately where it's good, but for everything else pnpm just makes sense)
If you're still on npm, try pnpm. It's literally the same commands but faster and you stop wasting disk space. That's it.
Sometimes the best upgrades are the ones you've been putting off.