Remix is ditching React (and I think that's a good thing)

Remix is making a dramatic break from React: Remix v3 will be built without React, using a fork of Pact instead. The shift matters because it signals a broader reset in how full-stack web frameworks might be designed—less as “React plus routing plus bundling,” and more as a framework that owns the full stack, aligns tightly with web standards, and is ready for new interaction models driven by AI.

The story starts with Remix’s origin as a React-focused upgrade path. Remix grew out of React Router’s limitations: React Router turned URLs into the right UI, but the React ecosystem lacked a cohesive, recommended “full-stack” approach. React Router itself was created by Michael Jackson and Ryan Florence, who came from the Ember community and built routing for React to fill gaps around performance and page-level rendering. Despite React Router’s dominance, the React team never officially endorsed it—never included in create React app and not highlighted in React docs—creating long-running resentment in the community.

Remix initially tried to fix the “React at scale” pain companies were hitting: slow builds, unreliable hot reloads, and data-fetching patterns that caused waterfall delays. It began as a paid, closed-source template alternative to create React app, betting heavily on modern tooling like esbuild and on route-level data loaders that moved fetching logic out of components and into the routing layer. That approach made Remix feel like “React Router, but for the whole stack,” with server-side rendering patterns designed to improve SEO and performance.

Over time, Remix’s business model and architecture collided with market realities. Next.js surged, and Shopify acquired Remix to support its own React-based direction—especially after Shopify’s Hydrogen project ran into trouble with early server component assumptions. After the acquisition, Remix effectively got absorbed into React Router’s evolution: React Router V7 absorbed the bundler and server runtime pieces, added server component support, and created a migration path for Remix users. That success also meant Remix v2 became a thin wrapper—and Remix was effectively put to sleep to make room for a new iteration.

The new plan, laid out in “Wake up Remix,” reframes the framework as a full-stack platform rather than a React-adjacent wrapper. React Router V7 is positioned as the stable, battle-tested home for server component adoption, with a smooth incremental path for existing Remix and React Router users. React Router’s governance is also shifting toward open governance to avoid single-vendor control, and it’s already powering major production apps across Shopify and other well-known sites.

Remix v3 then uses that freedom to pursue a different foundation: owning critical dependencies (including avoiding React), minimizing reliance on compiler tricks, and keeping runtime behavior close to source code. The framework’s design principles emphasize model-first development for LLM-driven UX and developer workflows, heavy use of web APIs to avoid server/client divergence, strict composition rules for replaceable abstractions, and a cohesive distribution model that packages the ecosystem into a single toolbox. The result is a bet that the next decade of web frameworks should rethink the route-to-response model from first principles—potentially making it easier for both humans and AI systems to build and stream modern experiences.