This week we have great deep dive blog posts about data fetching (TanStack vs Next.js) and performance (GitHub and Linear).
On the React Native side, Expo dropped a major SDK with Expo UI stable. Reanimated leverages the shared animation backend and improves CSS animations on iOS.
Supply chain security remains an important topic. npm introduced staged publishing workflows, and will block postinstall scripts by default in the near future.
Let's dive in!
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Claude writes your code. Claude reviews your code. Claude fixes the review comments. And somehow, you're the one getting paged at 2am when it breaks in prod.
π Component Architecture for React Server Components - A deep dive into data fetching techniques, their limits and tradeoffs. RSCs permit to design explicit loading experiences and leverage composition more than loaders.
π TanStack Router and Query - Integrating Query with Route loaders permits to start fetching data as early as possible (even on intent / link hover), and have granular control over what suspends/defers. Itβs recommended to avoid Router.useLoaderData() and treat the loader as a fire-and-forget event handler.
π Modernizing GitHub Issues navigation performance - GitHub is in the middle of moving from Rails-rendered pages to a React frontend. They explain how they improved Issues navigation performance, involving a mix of soft/hard navigation and Rails Turbo transitions.
π How's Linear so fast? - Someone studied in depth their techniques, involving many details, including using MobX observables and storing content locally in IndexedDB.
π One core, six frameworks, zero runtime abstraction - Formisch is a framework-agnostic form library that integrates with many frameworks by swapping native reactivity at build time instead of providing adapters. React doesnβt have native signals so it still requires a minimal signal implementation.
π¦ Liquid DOM - Liquid Glass for the Web - A promising library based on WebGPU and HTML-in-Canvas, providing first-class React and React-Three-Fiber bindings.
If youβre building agents, pushing the boundaries of AI engineering, or have something genuinely new to share about autonomous systems, this one is for you.
Agent Conf is calling for proposals, and they want the good stuff - not safe corporate talks, but bold, experimental, and production-hardened ideas that move the field forward. As a speaker, youβll be sharing the stage with heavy hitters like Kent C. Dodds and Nader Dabit.
A new Expo SDK is out! As always itβs packed with lots of changes. It bumps to React Native 0.85 and React 19.2, which bring Hermes V1 by default, the new animation backend, and more.
Here are the most notable highlights:
βStable Expo UI - SwiftUI on iOS and Jetpack Compose on Android, now production-ready, providing universal components, replacing 8 community libraries. The worklet integration and useNativeState() help you implement flicker-free masking.
Expo Router - no longer depends on @react-navigation/*. It ships with experimental support for the new native stack (Material-style headers, predictive back gesture), SSR streaming on web, and customizable SuspenseFallback in layout routes.
Faster native builds - precompiled XCFrameworks cut iOS clean builds ~16% and opt-in precompiled headers on Android deliver up to 2.81x faster CMake builds.
Expo modules improvements - inline modules let you write Kotlin/Swift alongside JS with automatic TS type generation. A new Kotlin compiler plugin replaces reflection, yielding ~40% faster cold starts and ~33% faster first render on Android.
And many more great additions like File System API, consistent status and navigation bars, and stable iOS widgets, there are far too many updates to list. Make sure to check out the full changelog or watch the official intro video.
π¬ React Native RFC - Dedicated *Instance types for built-in RN component refs - With the upcoming Strict TypeScript API and auto-generated types, built-in components will be typed as functions instead of classes: useRef will break. This RFC proposes to export a ViewInstance type to let you type useRef instead.
π One React for Web and Native - An outline on how to unify React Native with the web platform to reduce ecosystem fragmentation. React Native directly implements subsets of the DOM specification to make React Strict DOM possible.
π¦ NativeScript React Native - TurboModule wrapper giving access to all native APIs in React Native, letting you create UIKit views on the fly. This looks promising, and Iβm sure weβll hear more about it soon!
π¦ Lynx UI - The React Native competitor launched unstyled UI components for ReactLynx covering scroll views, popovers, swipers, sheets, reference design language. Programmable interactions and motion.
π₯ App.js Conf 2026 - The conf starts tomorrow, free to watch live.
β
π Other
π TC39 - 114th meeting outcome - Last weekβs meeting advanced many exciting ES proposals: Explicit Resource Management, Atomics.pause, Iterator APIs, Intl APIs, and more.
π npm PR - Phase 1 of making install scripts opt-in - npm CLI implementing new supply chain security features! This introduces various APIs such as package.allowScripts. Phase 1 (being backported in v11) will emit an advisory warning on unapproved scripts. Phase 2 (v12.0) will block unapproved script runs by default.
π WICG proposal - Persistent Iframes - Very early, but this could help make MPAs more compelling against SPAs if there was a way to preserve chats and audio/video players across navigation.
π CSS vs. JavaScript animations - Explains the performance and flexibility tradeoff of animating with JS vs animating with CSS/WAAPI on a separate thread.
π Read Online Hi everyone, Seb and Jan here π! This week we have React and Next.js security patches. React Aria becomes first-class in shadcn. A benchmark grades coding agents at real React tasks. The rise of TSRX and its upcoming framework. On the mobile side, Swift Package Manager support is finally coming. A TC39 meeting is in progress; we'll share the proposal updates next week. Oxlint type-aware linting is ready for prime-time. Meanwhile, Yuku explains how it outperforms Oxc at parsing...
π Read Online Hi everyone, Konrad and Szymon from Software Mansion here. This week, the React team documented its reorganization into working groups. The docs got a new section on what actually activates a Suspense boundary. A few thoughtful posts weighed React against lighter alternatives like HTMX and SolidJS. On the React Native side, two RFCs caught our eye: media queries in StyleSheet and ViewTransition support, plus a Nitro Modules rewrite of Rive that's up to 94x faster. Also worth...
π Read Online Hi everyone, Seb and Jan here π! Things are relatively calm on the React side this week, but it's still worth highlighting Base UI becoming the default headless lib in shadcn, and Vinext getting close to production-ready. On the mobile side, React Native 0.87 went full Marie Kondo. We also have a nice preview of React Navigation 8 and the relentless stream of AI tooling updates. TypeScript 7.0 is out, and it's 10x faster. Ecma has officially approved ES2026, and HTTP is finally...
