When working with Hono , both code-first and API-first approaches have valid use cases.

@hono/zod-openapi is an excellent choice for many teams that prefer a code-first workflow. However, some teams deliberately choose (or are required) to adopt an API-first strategy, where the OpenAPI specification is the Single Source of Truth.

This article shows a simple, flexible way to implement API-first with Hono using @apical-ts/craft and a lightweight custom generator.

Why Some Teams Choose API-First

While code-first is often faster for small-to-medium projects, API-first becomes valuable when you want to keep the door open to potentially switch frameworks in the future.

Generally speaking, code-first typically delivers the best developer experience as your consumers are also in the TypeScript ecosystem, but it introduces framework lock-in.…