Waku is a minimal React framework designed for building marketing sites, headless commerce, and full-stack web applications with a focus on lightweight architecture and developer experience.
The framework addresses the complexity of modern React development by embracing server components and server actions as first-class patterns. It solves the problem of bundle size and full-stack code organization by allowing developers to flexibly move server-client boundaries within a single React codebase. The approach centers on composing with ecosystem libraries rather than the framework owning those concerns, keeping the framework surface minimal while supporting React 19 features including server components, client components, and shared components that work across both boundaries.
Waku suits developers who want a lightweight foundation and prefer explicit control over server-client separation through the `'use client'` directive. It works well for projects of any size where the architecture matters more than project scope, and where teams want to avoid maintaining separate backend and frontend codebases. The framework is built for those comfortable with modern React rendering patterns and willing to learn server component semantics in exchange for smaller client bundles and powerful full-stack composability. It differs from heavier frameworks by keeping its own surface minimal and delegating concerns like routing and state management to the ecosystem rather than providing opinionated built-in solutions.
The project maintains active development with regular updates to support the latest React features. Development is responsive to ecosystem changes and React specification evolution. The maintainers provide comprehensive learning resources including guided quick-start documentation and step-by-step tutorials on the project website.
