What is waku?

Waku is a lightweight framework for building React websites and web apps. It is designed for developers at startups and agencies working on small to medium-sized projects like marketing sites, light e-commerce stores, and simple web applications. The name means "framework" in Japanese, and the goal is to bring a simpler, more enjoyable developer experience to modern React development. The project focuses on React's newer "server components" pattern, which lets your code run on the server by default rather than always sending everything to the user's browser. This means you can do things like fetch data from a database or read files securely without bloating the user's download. When you need interactivity like a button click counter, you simply add a single line of code at the top of that specific file to mark it as a "client component" that runs in the browser. This approach keeps your application bundle smaller than traditional React setups. It also includes a straightforward routing system based on your folder structure. You create pages and layouts by adding files to a pages directory, and the framework handles the URL mapping for you. You can choose to statically pre-render some pages at build time for speed, or dynamically render them on each visit for personalized content. The routing supports standard patterns like dynamic URLs for blog posts or product categories. The framework is aimed at teams who want modern React features without the weight of larger frameworks suited for heavy enterprise applications. It is explicitly still in rapid development and not yet recommended for production projects, as features are still being added and changes are expected before a stable release. A notable tradeoff is its embrace of server components, which introduce a learning curve around which code runs where. Waku acknowledges this complexity but argues the flexibility of moving the boundary between server and client code is worth it, keeping everything in one codebase rather than splitting backend and frontend apart.