The stack question feels enormously important and mostly isn't. Almost anything can build almost anything you have in mind. What actually differs is how much of your attention the stack takes before you get to work on your idea.

The only criteria that matter

How fast can you see a change? If saving a file and refreshing a browser shows you the result, you will iterate a hundred times an evening. If it takes a build step and a restart, you will iterate ten times, and each one costs more attention.

How much has to be true before "hello world" works? Count the accounts, config files and installs. That number is what stands between you and starting.

How much of it exists in the model's head? Models are dramatically better at popular, stable technology than at anything new or niche. A framework that changed its API six months ago will produce confident code for the old version all afternoon.

Can you deploy it in one step? If getting your work online is a project of its own, it will not happen tonight, and a thing that isn't online isn't finished.

The default answer

For most first projects, the honest recommendation is: one HTML file, one CSS file, one JavaScript file, opened directly in a browser. No build, no install, no framework. It sounds too simple. It will take you further than you expect, and everything you learn transfers.

Add a server only when you need something a browser cannot do: keeping a secret, storing data for other people, or talking to an API that refuses to be called from a web page.

Getting a recommendation you can trust

stack-choice.txt
I want to build: <your one sentence>
Experience: <be honest>
It must: <store data for multiple users? / call a paid API? / just run
in a browser?>

Recommend ONE stack — not a comparison. Justify it in three lines
against the most obvious alternative. Optimise for how quickly I can
see my changes and how few accounts I need before I start.

Then list every account and install I need, in order, before I write
any code.

Ask for one recommendation. Given options, you will spend the evening reading comparisons, which feels like progress and is not.

When to change your mind

Change stack when the current one is actively blocking a thing your spec needs — not because you read that something else is faster. A rewrite costs you every hour you have already spent, and buys a speed difference no user of a project this size will ever notice.