Deep Dive: React Server Components in TanStack Start

React Server Components are now the default in Next.js and they’re shipping in TanStack Start. Whether you opted in or not, you’re going to encounter them in 2026. The good news: the TanStack approach makes RSCs feel like a tool you can opt-in for instead of a paradigm shift like in Next.js. Let’s look at RSCs in depth - Your component runs on the server. The server sends back the already-rendered tree as data, called the RSC payload. Not HTML. Not JavaScript. The client reads the payload and re