Hitting the maximum call stack size happens when a recursive function or deep nested function calls itself too many times. Tail-call optimization or breaking the recursion into loops can help.

When you encounter a 'Maximum call stack size exceeded' error in Node.js, it’s usually due to deep or infinite recursion. Each recursive function call adds a new frame to the call stack, and if this exceeds the engine’s limit, you get this error. To solve this, you can either refactor the recursive logic into an iterative one using loops, or apply tail-call optimization. In tail-call optimization, the recursive call is the last operation performed by the function, allowing the runtime to reuse the current stack frame. Although Node.js doesn’t natively support tail-call optimization in all cases, understanding your recursive logic and rewriting it can prevent call stack overflow. You can also increase the stack size using Node’s --stack-size flag, but fixing the root cause is a more sustainable approach.