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If you have a monorepo, it is pretty convenient to have synchronized Typescript definitions for communication between frontend/backend because they reference the same file. If you use different languages, then you'll need a translation layer/tool for shared interfaces and that can occasionally desync over time.

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If you use something else as a source of truth, for example generate your definitions from protobuf or openapi spec, why would it get desynchronised?

I’ve done a couple of openapi-based systems recently and it’s a pretty good experience. I can generate server and client stubs next to models in various languages.

Not every project needs to use protobuf or openapi. It's an overkill dependency for internal APIs to solve the problem of mismatching interfaces that's easily solved with a shared Typescript file used by both codebases.

Assuming that one can afford working with TypeScript on both ends, maybe. But what if you need to support other languages?

brew install protobuf && some-proto-gen-wrapper.sh

job done.

Even bigger than that is reusing the same validation logic client side and server side.

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