Zod: From Form Validation to TypeScript's Universal Contract
Zod's 224M weekly downloads (checked August 2026) put it far beyond 'form validation library': API boundaries, environment variables, route search params, LLM tool schemas and structured output all run on the same schemas. The core mechanism is one definition, two payoffs — runtime validation and static types derived from a single source. Zod 4 (on npm July 2025) is faster, slimmer, and easier on tsc.