How I Built a Production-Ready Serverless NestJS API on AWS (and Open-Sourced It)

I've built the same serverless API setup at least five times now. I work with AWS and TypeScript daily. Every new service starts the same way: NestJS app, stick it on Lambda, wire up API Gateway, add auth, add a database, add a queue for background jobs, configure environments, set up monitoring. After the third time copy-pasting infrastructure code between repos, I decided to build a proper starter kit. I open-sourced the core as serverless-nestjs-starter , and built a Pro version with everything I actually need in production. Here's what I learned along the way. The Problem With Existing Starters Most NestJS + Lambda examples I found online had the same issues: They use Express (slower cold starts) They use @vendia/serverless-express (heavier adapter) No real infrastructure code - just a handler file and "deploy it yourself" Single auth mode hardcoded in No database, no queues, no observability No multi-environment support I wanted something I could clone, change a JSON config file,