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Having used Intercooler a few times now, it feels like the worst of all worlds since you now have to write and return HTML at AJAX endpoints and keep that HTML synced with the rest of your HTML (e.g. consider CSS) instead of just returning data from an API endpoint.

You end up with a bunch of made-for-Intercooler endpoints instead of thoughtful, general, data API endpoints.

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We're using intercooler on our current site and find it easier to keep the API side of the application separate from the HTML-generating MPA side.

Internally they both call out to common code, but we like to keep the API-side RESTful and aren't so concerned about REST for the HTML side, both the full page views and intercooler-specific partials.

Your general data api and your application api should be separated, since they are different concerns with different requirements, as you are discovering.

Intercooler is better mentally modeled going from a traditional web application -> more interactivity rather than going from a JSON data API SPA -> an intercooler application.

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