#​440 — August 20, 2025

Read on the Web

☀️ We're back after a week's break, though I'm starting to think we should have taken two weeks off, as it has been quiet in React land. That means a tight and tidy issue for today – enjoy! :-)
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Peter Cooper, your editor

Together with  Code Rabbit
⚛️ React Status

Reflections on the React Community — Lee, formerly of Vercel and widely recognized for his influence on Next.js and React, shares candid reflections on the React community, digging into the rise of React Server Components, the tension between commercial and non-commercial priorities, the toll of burnout, and a reminder that, above all, this is still a community of people.

Lee Robinson

Next.js 15.5 Released — Next.js 15.5 includes Turbopack builds in beta, stable Node.js middleware, TypeScript improvements, next lint deprecation, and deprecation warnings in preparation for Next.js 16.

Gubler and Sandberg (Vercel)

CodeRabbit’s Free AI Code Reviews in IDE - VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf — Code Rabbit brings AI code reviews to VS Code, Cursor & Windsurf. Get line-by-line reviews, one-click fixes & codebase-aware feedback - all free in your IDE. Seamlessly integrates with git workflows. Install the extension & start reviewing!

CodeRabbit sponsor

▶  React Mock Interview: Three Devs Take on a Challenge — Three expert developers (Kent C Dodds, Piyush Agarwal, and Jack Herrington) all take on the same React development challenge to build a form complete with validation, much as if they were facing a job interview. If you’ve got the time to watch a 50 minute video, this is both fun and educational.

Shruti Kapoor

React Native 0.81 Released — React Native gains Android 16 support (say hello to mandatory edge to edge views) and targets it by default. v0.81 also introduces precompiled iOS builds for up to 10x faster builds.

Zilberman, Zaidman, et al.

💡 Related to the above, a two-week beta period for Expo SDK 54 has just begun, complete with React Native 0.81 and React 19.1.

📺 Three Amazing New TanStack Query Features Jack Herrington

📄 React Cache: It’s About Consistency“I want to make the case for appreciating cache as more than just a memoization and optimization technique for network data fetching, but instead as an API that guarantees consistency across an entire RSC render.” Ryan Toronto

📄 Server and Client Component Composition in Practice Aurora Scharff

🛠  Code, Tools & Libraries

🗓️ A Comparison of Six React Calendar Components for 2025 — Whether you need something that ‘just works’, something that can be heavily branded/themed, or you need the full Google Calendar style experience, Matt has some options for you.

Matt Abrams (Builder)

🤖 React ChatBotify: React Library for Building Chatbot Systems — A platform and library for building modern chatbot tools for the Web. Supports React 16-19. It also has its own Discord community with a few hundred developers. GitHub repo.

React ChatBotify Team

Secure Your AI Agents So That You Can Protect Your Users — Whether you have a B2B or B2C use case, Auth0 is a full IdP that provides robust security like MFA and continuous threat monitoring.

Auth0 sponsor

React Cosmos 7.0: Sandbox for Developing & Testing UI Components — A React-only tool for developing and testing UI components in isolation. It’s explained in more depth here.

Ovidiu Cherecheș et al.

React Native WebGPU — A React Native WebGPU implementation using Dawn. Currently a technical preview.

William Candillon

📢  Elsewhere in JavaScript

A roundup of some other interesting stories in the broader JavaScript landscape, in case you've missed them: