📨 #271: Vinext, RSC, Activity, Async React, Next.js, TanStack | Expo 55, Router, Survey, Enriched, Maestro, Metro, Sparkling, Grab, Brownfield | TC39, Temporal, Navigation, npmx, Bun, Deno, Solid

March 4, 2026 · 12 min read

Newsletter creator - Docusaurus maintainer

React Native Developer

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, let’s 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!

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Dominik DorfmeisterWeb Developer - React-Query maintainer

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⚛️ React

What is Vinext really worth?

Last week, we covered Vinext, Cloudflare’s AI-driven reimplementation of Next.js on top of Vite. Now that the dust has settled, let’s see what the community and the Next.js team have to say.

🔐 Vibe-Hacking Cloudflare's Vibe-Coded Next.js Replacement - Show that AI-generated code passing functional tests can still miss security hardening, and automated AI tooling can help find those vulnerabilities.
🐦 Guillermo Rauch - “We've identified, responsibly disclosed, and confirmed 2 critical, 2 high, 2 medium, 1 low security vulnerabilities”
🐦 Jimmy Lai mentions that Vinext’s 94% API coverage is misleading - In reality, Vinext only passes a limited number of the 13,000+ Next.js test suite (13% dev, 20% e2e, 10% production). Many edge cases are likely misbehaving.
🐦 The cio.gov website using Vinext is "basically a static site" - This deployment doesn’t really dogfood the whole API surface of Next.js.
📖 Vercel docs - Migrate to Vercel from Cloudflare - It’s no secret that Vercel/Cloudflare CEOs do not like each other. The timing of this newly published docs page feels… noteworthy.
🎥 Fireship - Cloudflare just slop forked Next.js

While the AI-generated port is undeniably impressive, it’s likely too early to adopt it in production. It also remains unclear whether Cloudflare intends to support the project over the long term and make it production-ready.

💸 Next.js minifies your code into mush. Source maps fix that. Learn how to wire up Sentry so your stack traces are actually readable
📣 Linux Foundation Announces the Formation of the React Foundation
👀 React.dev PR - Add RSC Sandboxes - The React docs website has merged infrastructure to run full-stack interactive playgrounds. However, it hasn’t been used on any public page yet. The server-related features (RSC, async components, use, Suspense, Server Functions, Actions, streaming) run locally in a Web Worker.
👀 Oxlint + React Compiler Rules integration demo - Oxlint supports loading ESLint plugins via the jsPlugins, so technically it can run the React Compiler rules too.
📖 <ViewTransition> docs - New example - Animating enter/exit with Activity
💬 Next.js issue - Server requests and latency increased after upgrading from Next.js 15 to 16 - Users noticed an increase in server requests after upgrading. Andrew explains this is due to a new fine-grained segment prefetching system that maximizes caching efficiency. A new prefetchInlining flag is coming to give you control over this behavior until they implement a sensible heuristic.
💬 Devon from React Aria explains the limits of the native <dialog> vs JS/React abstractions
🗓 React Summit - 🇳🇱 Amsterdam - 12 & 16 Jun. Join thousands of React devs live in Amsterdam or online. Learn from top contributors and enjoy the festival-style vibes! Register now using promo code TWIR (-10%)
📜 Error rendering with RSC - Great deep-dive into how errors flow through the 3 RSC rendering environments (RSC server, SSR, browser). Only the browser supports Error Boundaries, so RSC/SSR errors need a clear path to reach the client side and get displayed.
📜 Understanding Why React Fiber Exists - Greatly explains why React abandoned recursive reconciliation in favor of the Fiber architecture, making it possible to pause rendering and accept new user inputs.
📜 React is changing the game for streaming apps with the Activity component - Practical use case for <Activity> to preserve playback state when hiding video/audio players. Don’t forget to pause the player using an Effect cleanup function.
📜 Frontend Memory Leaks: A 500-Repository Static Analysis - A study scanned 500 repos across many frameworks and breaks down the results. Gives an overview of the most frequent React-related memory leaks, notably the lack of a useEffect cleanup function.
📜 Create a Per-Request Database Instance with React Router Middleware - Shows how to wrap each request in a database transaction.
💸 Certificates.dev - Validate your cross-stack capability with a comprehensive Certification for Laravel. Limited-time launch offer: 40% off!
📦 TanStack Store 0.9 - API breaking changes, using faster alien-signals library
📦 Vite Plugin React beta.0 - Drop Vite 7 support, remove Babel dependency
📦 Next-translate 3.0 - Turbopack, Next.js 16, and a New Chapter
📦 React-Admin 5.12, 5.13, 5.14 - February 2026 Update
🎥 Jack Herrington - TanStack Start SSR: 3 Reasons To Love It
🎥 Josef Bender - New TanStack Package: Exclusive First Look
🎙️ This Month in React 2026-02 - CloudFlare remakes Next with AI; Vercel big mad. We talk too much about AI Agents

Don't miss the next email!

It's exceptionally well curated, offers great insights and is well worth subscribing to!

Addy OsmaniHead of Chrome DX - Google

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📱 React-Native

Expo SDK 55

Expo SDK 55 is out now as a stable release! It brings React Native 0.83, React 19.2, Expo Router 55, and a massive amount of improvements across the entire ecosystem.

React Native 0.82 & 0.83 Highlights:

The New Architecture is now a requirement. You can try out new AI skills to help you with the update process.
React 19.2 Integration: Brings the new <Activity> API (for preserving state in hidden component trees) and useEffectEvent.
DOM Node APIs: Native components now provide DOM-like nodes via refs, allowing you to traverse the UI tree and measure layouts just like on the web.
Revamped DevTools: A brand-new DevTools desktop app that no longer requires a browser, featuring dedicated Network and Performance panels. Web Performance APIs are also now stable.
Optimized Android Debugging: A new debugOptimized build type speeds up your dev environment, allowing animations and re-renders to hit ~60FPS while still allowing JS debugging.
Experimental Hermes V1: Available as an opt-in, bringing meaningful performance improvements for bundle loading and Time to Interactive (TTI).

Expo SDK 55 Highlights:

Expo Router v55 with Native Features: Added support for the native Apple Zoom transition, a new iOS Stack.Toolbar API, experimental SplitView, and a new Colors API for dynamic Material 3 and adaptive iOS colors. Yes, the versioning scheme has changed: it’s v55, not v7.
AI Tooling: You can try out new AI skills to help you with the update process. Expo also introduced Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools for CLI actions/EAS services, alongside the official expo/skills repository.
Developer Experience: A small but welcome improvement is the ability to discover active dev servers on iOS with no QR code scanning needed!
Smaller OTA updates: ship up to 75% smaller OTA updates thanks to Hermes bytecode bundle diffing.

This release also shapes the future of video in React Native. The legacy expo-av module has been removed and replaced by expo-video & expo-audio, which feature an improved API, synchronous calls, and better state management with atomic state updates.

State of React Native 2025

The results for the State of React Native 2025 survey are officially out! This year marks the 10th anniversary of React Native, alongside hitting a massive milestone of 4 million weekly downloads (double last year's numbers!). The ecosystem is maturing rapidly, and the survey reflects a highly positive shift in the overall developer experience. Software Mansion devs break it down on their YouTube channel.

Here are some of the highlights that we’ve found interesting:

The New Architecture Era: The New Architecture is now the default and has already reached an impressive ~80% adoption rate. Combined with recent React Native releases shipping with zero user-facing breaking changes, the dreaded "upgrade pain" is finally fading into the past.
Navigation: React Navigation and Expo Router dominate the space. While deep linking and TypeScript inference remain the top developer pain points, upcoming updates (like React Navigation 8) are specifically targeting these exact issues. We are also seeing a massive push toward new native primitives like native tabs, split views, and zoom transitions.
Styling: The community is heavily leaning into Tailwind-style utility classes (NativeWind) and react-native-unistyles. While the "lack of a standard CSS API" was a top complaint, React Native is rapidly closing the gap by shipping web-compatible features natively—like box shadows, gradients, and CSS filters—with more on the way.
Graphics & Animations: React Native Reanimated remains the undisputed king of animations, with developers highly praising the new Shared Element Transitions. Meanwhile, React Native Skia is maturing fast, empowering developers to build much more ambitious and performant custom graphics without native code.
Community Stewardship: With the recent launch of the independent React Foundation (hosted by the Linux Foundation), the future stewardship of React Native looks incredibly stable.