That’s the paradox of Next.js: it can feel extremely simple and extremely complex at the same time. For a small hobby project hosted on Vercel, I’d recommend it. For building a full SaaS product, I often regret it.

I’ve run into this myself. I tried middleware, AsyncLocalStorage, even wrapping layouts and pages in HOCs. After plenty of research, it still feels over-engineered for such a trivial task. Ironically, my understanding is that Next.js on Vercel already provides a requestId by default.

Another recurring issue is the documentation. The moment you hit anything even slightly advanced, it becomes too simplified to be useful, and the only guidance you find is a handful of open GitHub issues.