Open Source at Scale with Corbin Crutchley

🎧 New Señors @ Scale Episode

This week, I spoke with Corbin Crutchley, lead maintainer of TanStack Form, Microsoft MVP, and VP of Engineering. Corbin started coding professionally at 16, built his own form library prototype over a weekend, and ended up in a 30-minute conversation with Tanner Lindsley that turned into an invitation to lead TanStack Form — a library now getting over a million downloads a week. He's also the author of a free book teaching React, Angular, and Vue simultaneously, a speaker, conference organizer, and one of the most thoughtful voices in the open source community on maintainer sustainability and mental health.

In this episode, we dig into how TanStack Form was born, what it actually means to version a library responsibly, how to survive the emotional toll of open source, and the Magic: The Gathering game that accidentally led to a VP role.

⚙️ Main Takeaways

1. The House Form prototype that started everything

Corbin built TanStack Form's predecessor, House Form, over a single weekend after his team found that existing form solutions didn't fit large enterprise projects.

• The setup: His team evaluated React Hook Form and Formik, found that neither scaled well for high-customization enterprise use cases, and came back empty-handed.
• The spark: Corbin had an idea for splitting validators into multiple kinds and built a working prototype over the weekend, integrating it directly into their codebase.
• The chain: That prototype led to an invite-only hackathon, a conversation with Tanner Lindsley, and an invitation to lead TanStack Form before it even had a name. "What started as a 30-minute conversation ended with 'those are great ideas, we should do it, come join us.'"

2. Versioning is a social contract, not a technical policy

Pre-V1 libraries can break. Post-V1 libraries carry a promise to their users that stability is the priority.

• The contract: "Open source and versioning is a bit of a social contract. We are going to rely on your tool. And we expect that to some degree, that tool is going to remain stable."
• The practice: TanStack Form has been V1 for a while — there was even a case where server-side rendering wasn't working as expected and Corbin added a hacky non-breaking workaround rather than ship a breaking change.
• The process: When a V2 does come, it starts with internal RFCs, then alpha, then beta, then RC. By the time you're in RC, structural feedback is almost too late — get in during beta.

3. The 99% who never file an issue

The negative comments are loud. The satisfied users are silent — and they're the vast majority.

• The math: TanStack Form gets a million downloads a week. Corbin hears from maybe 1% of those users. If 1% of users are angry, that means 99% are just shipping.
• The reframe: "Every negative comment you receive, you have to imagine that there's 10 comments of positivity that are not being told."
• The dashboard: He opens a dashboard that shows which companies are using TanStack Form. Seeing a name he recognizes — a company he'd never expect — is a grounding reminder of the real scale and real impact.

4. He almost quit open source

There was a period where rude GitHub issues nearly ended his open source career entirely.

• The moment: A couple of projects received issues that were "just very blanketly, abruptly mean." Not constructive criticism — just mean. For a couple of months, he genuinely questioned whether to keep doing open source.
• The resolution: He sat down and worked through the thought process, came out the other side, and is glad he did. "It's very fulfilling and very rewarding when things are going right."
• The guidance: If you're a maintainer going through it, the silent users are shipping. The noise is not the signal.

5. Open source funding has no good answer yet

Companies use open source at scale. The economics don't match the value created.

• The scale: A penny per download from TanStack Form would be life-changing money. It doesn't work that way.
• The honest take: The most he's been paid for open source is through TanStack — because Tanner is personally generous, not because companies pay proportionally to the value they extract.
• On enterprise editions: He's skeptical that an enterprise tier on top of open source is the sustainable answer. It diverts focus from the open source work itself, brings SLA and uptime obligations, and doesn't always find product-market fit. Tailwind UI has had a hard time with it despite the strength of the underlying project.

6. Open source is becoming more like closed-source teams

AI-generated PRs are changing the contribution dynamic, and open source will adapt.

• The shift: AI is starting to flood smaller projects with low-quality PRs. The signal-to-noise ratio on contributions is getting worse.
• The response: Open source will increasingly look like dedicated teams — a tight-knit group allocated to the project — rather than anyone-can-contribute free-for-alls.
• The implication: The way to get involved in a major open source project in the future is through social relationships, bug reports, triage, and issue quality — not just sending a PR.

7. Documentation philosophy: Diataxis and empathy for users

Good documentation is hard because the skills for writing it differ from the skills for building the code.

• The framework: Corbin uses Diataxis, which separates documentation into reference material, tutorials, educational content, and how-to guides. Each serves a different reader need.
• The team culture: Everyone on TanStack pays attention to docs, not just designated docs maintainers. They consume the docs themselves as users.
• The principle: "As long as we remain focused on the actual engineers behind our users, that's when docs tend to get very good."

8. MCP for docs enhances but doesn't replace them

The ability to query documentation through an AI interface raises the bar on documentation quality, not lowers it.

• The point: If anything, AI-assisted lookup makes good documentation more important because the AI is synthesizing from it. Thin or inconsistent docs produce worse AI answers.
• The use case: Being able to look up reference material from an AI chat during coding is valuable. But you still need accurate, comprehensive source docs for that to work well.

9. The VP role came from a Magic: The Gathering game

The path to leadership was not a career plan — it was a chain of curiosity.

• The story: Playing Magic: The Gathering with a friend led to an idea for a Tony Hawk board game, which led to learning Unity, which led to him mentioning Unity in a conversation about a friend's 3D work problem, which led to a consulting gig, which led to an offer to lead the team.
• The lesson: "You can't plan for everything that comes up." The curiosity-first approach — Tiny Experiments style, as Dan noted — creates the surface area for unexpected opportunities.
• The self-awareness: "I don't think I'm the strongest engineer in any room. What I do think I have is a good understanding of what it means to be an engineer and empathy for individuals on the team."

10. Bi-directional communication is the hardest management problem

As a VP, the gap between engineering execution and business intent is the real challenge.

• The shift from IC: As an individual contributor, you're given a task with defined parameters. As a manager, you're making bets on what the business actually benefits from.
• The mistake to avoid: Moving fast on direction before understanding why things are being done the current way. "Even if the answer is 'we didn't have time,' that's still a valid answer you can correct for."
• The practice: Regular 1:1s at every level, including with the CTO. Very public, async-driven communication with as much documentation as possible.

11. The most undervalued role in engineering teams: designers

The one engineering practice Corbin would recommend every team adopt.

• The value: Designers can proof-of-concept, run user testing, and validate ideas before engineering capacity even gets to them. They de-risk decisions early.
• The gap: Until an idea hits actual users, it remains abstract in ways that are hard to think about clearly. Designers are the bridge between the idea and that reality.
• The structure: Good design-to-engineering handoff and giving designers a seat at the decision-making table is a "critical component to any successful engineering team."

12. Mental health in open source: getting help is not weakness

Corbin publicly disclosed his experience with schizophrenia and uses the platform to normalize mental health conversations in tech.

• The message: "You, you listening, you are valuable. Getting help is not weakness, especially if it's with mental health."
• The normalization: He's been to psychiatric wards and describes them as genuinely helpful places for people who need that support.
• The call: "The more frank conversations we can have about mental health in the industry, the better." The question no one ever asks him — but should — is about this part of his life.

🧠 What I Learned

• TanStack Form started as a weekend prototype built out of frustration with React Hook Form and Formik at enterprise scale.
• A 30-minute hackathon conversation with Tanner Lindsley led directly to leading one of the most downloaded form libraries in the JavaScript ecosystem.
• Versioning post-V1 is a social contract with users. Hacky non-breaking workarounds are sometimes the right call to honor that contract.
• The 99% of users who are happy don't file issues. The noise is always 1% of the signal.
• Open source burnout from rude issues is real and nearly ended Corbin's open source career. The reframe that saved it: silent users are shipping.
• There's no clean answer to open source funding. A penny per download would be transformational money. It doesn't work that way.
• AI-generated PRs are pushing open source toward tighter, more socially-driven maintainer teams.
• Diataxis (reference, tutorial, education, how-to) is a solid framework for organizing documentation that serves different reader needs.
• The VP role came from curiosity and a board game idea, not a career plan.
• The hardest management skill is translating business intent into engineering execution bi-directionally.
• Designers are undervalued — they validate ideas before engineering cycles are spent.
• Mental health conversations in tech are too rare. Getting help is not weakness.

💬 Favorite Quotes

"What started as a 30-minute conversation between 'I'm not sure we need that' ended with 'no, those are great ideas, come join us.'"

"Versioning is a bit of a social contract. We are going to rely on your tool. And we expect that tool is going to remain stable."

"Every negative comment you receive, you have to imagine that there's 10 comments of positivity that are not being told."

"I don't think I'm the strongest engineer in any room. What I do think I have is a good understanding of what it means to be an engineer and empathy for the individuals on the team."

"Getting help is not weakness, especially if it's with mental health. Fragility is what makes us strong in the end, not what makes us flawed."

🎯 Also in this Episode

• Starting programming professionally at 16 working at an adult charter school
• House Form: the weekend prototype that predated TanStack Form
• TanStack's full ecosystem: form, query, virtual, router, hotkeys, table, and more
• How the lead maintainers of TanStack Form delegate effectively so the project survives vacations and rough patches
• Why Corbin wrote a free book teaching React, Angular, and Vue simultaneously (framework-agnostic education)
• The decision to turn a single book into a trilogy after the side effects chapter hit 14,000 words
• Writing advice: write the "let vs const" post anyway — your framing may be what clicks for someone
• Will Larson's books as the one recommendation for anyone moving into engineering management
• Shoe Dog and Sarah Drasner's "Engineering Management for the Rest of Us"
• Team size: 8 people ±2-3 as the sweet spot (from Will Larson)
• The Tony Hawk board game idea → Unity → consulting → VP of Engineering chain
• His blog series "Pragmatic Advice for Teams" on async communication and documentation

Resources

More from Corbin:

• TanStack Form — Framework-agnostic form management for the web
• TanStack ecosystem — Query, Router, Virtual, Table, and more
• Corbin's free book — Framework Field Guide: teaching React, Angular, and Vue simultaneously

Book Recommendations:

• Engineering Management for the Rest of Us by Sarah Drasner
• An Elegant Puzzle by Will Larson
• Shoe Dog by Phil Knight — Nike founder memoir

🎧 Listen Now

🎧 Spotify
📺 YouTube
🍏 Apple Podcasts

Episode Length: 52 minutes on open source sustainability, versioning contracts, maintainer burnout, and what happens when curiosity leads the career.

If you maintain or contribute to open source, use TanStack tools, or are navigating the jump from IC to engineering leadership, this is one of the more honest conversations I've had on the show.

Happy building,
Dan