This week, we saw a lot of activity on X about the new AI skills system. Personally, what excited me most is the new Firefox release that unlocks interesting things for React developers.
The React Native ecosystem is also super active, with many interesting releases. And Iβm sure Expo 55 beta will drop just after we send our email π , so make sure to check their blog because itβs coming soon.
As always, thanks for supporting us on your favorite platform:
Next.js makes it easy to ship fast, but once your app is in production it can be hard to tell where errors, slow requests, or hydration issues are really coming from.
Join Sentry's hands-on workshop where Sergiy Dybskiy will dives into how these problems show up in real apps and how to connect what users experience with whatβs happening under the hood. π
A new Anthropic spec is gaining traction in the AI dev community. Skills let agents acquire capabilities on demand via progressive disclosureβlazy-loading only whatβs needed to keep context slim. Itβs been a hot topic in React this week, with multiple projects shipping open-source skills and tooling:
βSkills.sh, a platform launched by Vercel to discover popular open source skills
You might wonder why Firefox is the headline of the React section? It turns out this release is quite important for React developers, unlocking 3 new APIs that are now available in all browsers π:
βView transition types - React is relying on it (document.startViewTransition({update, types})) to conditionally enable its component. That component is still canary, but once unflagged, it should now work in all recent browsers!
βCSS anchor positioning - An awesome addition to CSS that should replace the need for JS-based positioning libraries many React apps used for dropdowns and tooltips, such as Tether, Popper.js, Floating UIβ¦
βNavigation API - This completely redefines the APIs used to build client-side routers / SPAs, providing a clean, centralized way to intercept navigation events, instead of using the clunky history API.
π¨ TanStack Builder alpha: A website to let you assemble your own TanStack visually. It looks like a convenient visual wrapper around create-tanstack-app.
π React Paris - π«π· Paris & Online - 26β27 March - React Paris is already 50% sold out - Secure your spot at this premier React event before prices increase by β¬200 and save an extra 10% with code "TWIR".
π useOptimistic Won't Save You - An interactive article showing that itβs not so easy to implement optimistic UI correctly, even with the new useOptimistic and useActionState APIs. This requires a good understanding of how React transitions work.
π Adapting Library Logic for React Compiler - The author of TanStack Form explains a problem encountered with the React Compiler that was not reported by the ESLint plugin. Using the compiler panicThreshold helped detect this problem more reliably.
π Rebuilding the GitHub pull request experience - This dev explores how GitHubβs PR UI could be much faster, especially for large PRs, and shares lessons learned. His Next.js + React 19 demo shows impressive performance compared to GitHubβs current experience.
π Can You Fetch Data with React Server Actions? - Not recommended, but technically possible, with caveats: no caching, requests are POST-only and generally processed sequentially by frameworks.
π¦ json-render - AI-generated UI with guardrails - Vercel introduced a new generative UI library. It lets users generate more complex dashboards, widgets, apps, and data visualizations from prompts, using a React component catalog you provide.
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Wallaby.js runs your tests as you type, feeding your AI assistant live runtime values, code coverage, error details, and execution paths β all right next to your code. With Wallaby v3βs new engine π, tests start instantly with cached results, prioritize active files, and stream updates in real time.
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π TC39 - Agenda for the 112th meeting - Currently in progress, some JS proposals already progressed, such as map.getOrInsert() (stage 4) and import.sync() (stage 2).
π The Curious Case of the Shallow Session SPAs: Alex Russell argues that most SPAs shouldnβt be. Data shows that, on average, users produce a single soft navigation after the initial load, and that the upfront cost we pay is probably not worth it.
π Read Online Hi everyone! This week is rather quiet in the React world, so we took a step back on Vinext, found great community blog posts, and weak signals. On the React Native side, letβs welcome our new author, Jan Jaworski, who covered the new Expo SDK and the State of React Native survey results, among many other things. Let's dive in! πΈ Sponsor Still writing tests manually? Notion, Dropbox and LaunchDarkly have found a new testing paradigm - and they can't imagine working without it....
π Read Online Hello everyone, Krzysztof and Kacper from Software Mansion here π The React Foundation officially launched. Cloudflare rebuilt the whole Next.js in a week using AI. In the meantime, the real Next.js is adding version-matched docs so agents always have context on new and recently updated APIs. On the React Native side, Hermes is moving beyond mobile: Hermes-node brings the engine to Node.js as a potential V8 swap. CSS Grid is also coming to React Native, and TanStack Router has...
π Read Online Hi everyone! Huge thanks β€οΈ β we just hit #1 resource on the State of React 2025 survey. Wild. This week leans heavily into TanStack and Next.js content, plus a few notable releases worth your time. On mobile, Hermes is clearly ramping up, and ByteDance just lowered the barrier to building Lynx apps. Letβs dive in. As always, thanks for supporting us on your favorite platform: π¦ Bluesky βοΈ X / Twitter π LinkedIn π½ Reddit πΈ Sponsor Cut Code Review Time & Bugs in Half Code reviews...