Octane is a fast JavaScript UI framework, and the successor to Inferno. You write components with the React API you already know, and a compiler turns them into direct DOM code before they ship. No virtual DOM, no rules-of-hooks bookkeeping, and no dependency arrays to maintain by hand.

Created by Dominic Gannaway, who also created Inferno and has worked on React, Lexical, Ripple, and Svelte.

import { useState } from 'octane';

export function Counter() @{
	const [count, setCount] = useState(0);

	<button onClick={() => setCount(count + 1)}>
		{'Count: ' + count}
	</button>
}

Why Octane

Your React knowledge transfers. useState, useEffect, memo, context, portals, Suspense, transitions: same API, same mental model, checked case by case against a large behavioral suite. React-derived coverage is tracked in the generated parity report rather than inferred from the size of the suite.

Standard JSX works, .tsrx gives you more. Paste a component from the React docs into a .tsx file and it runs. Or author in .tsrx, the spiritual successor to JSX, and get template directives (@if, @for, @switch, @try) that compile to keyed fast paths, plus an @{ … } shorthand that puts setup next to the output. Mix both dialects in one app and import across the boundary. TSRX for VS Code adds syntax highlighting, diagnostics, navigation, and completions for .tsrx files.

Write the closure, not its dependency list. Omit the array from useEffect, useMemo, useCallback, and friends, and the compiler derives it from what the closure actually captures, including stable setters, dispatchers, refs, and state getters. This is the no-bookkeeping DX people associate with signal frameworks, without leaving the hooks model. Explicit arrays still mean exactly what they mean in React.

No rules of hooks. Hooks are tracked by call site, not call order, so a hook can live inside an if or after an early return. The one rule left is enforced for you: a hook in a plain JS loop is a compile error, because every iteration would share a single call-site slot. Use the keyed @for directive instead, where each item gets its own hook state.

The platform, not a reimplementation of it. Real delegated DOM events, controlled form components on native events (React's value/checked semantics, with onInput per edit and native onChange on commit), and refs as plain props (ref={cb}, ref={obj}, even ref={[a, b]}). No synthetic layer second-guessing the browser.

No virtual DOM. Components re-render like React, but a compiled render path and an LIS-based keyed reconciler keep the runtime overhead minimal.

Octane is deliberately narrow where React has grown wide: no class components, no Server Components, no synthetic event system. Those are choices, not gaps, and they are written down in Differences from React.

Also in the box

• Editable state that follows its source. useLinkedState resets or adjusts local state as soon as an input changes, with no effect and no state update during render.
• Promises in render are safe. No cache() wrapper: creations feeding use() are memoized at their declarations, including local .then chains. Independent requests start together, one suspension per stratum, and descendant fetch trees prefetch while an ancestor is still suspended.
• Streaming SSR and byte-stable hydration, with out-of-order Suspense flushing over Node or web streams, or buffered and static rendering when you want it.
• Deferred hydration. <Hydrate> keeps server HTML visible but inert until it is worth activating, and splits its children into their own chunk by default.
• class / className composes clsx-style everywhere: strings, arrays, objects, and nesting, at every apply site.
• A current-state getter. useState and useReducer return [state, update, getState], so a delayed callback can read the latest value instead of a stale capture.

Install

Octane's published packages need Node.js 22.22.2 or newer.

Scaffold a project that already runs:

npm create octane my-app
cd my-app
npm run dev

--template spa is a client-only app and --template fullstack adds routing, streaming SSR, hydration, and a production build; leave the flag off and it asks.

In a project you already have, let the CLI wire it up instead, including the TypeScript settings .tsrx needs:

pnpm dlx @octanejs/cli init

Or do it by hand:

pnpm add octane @octanejs/vite-plugin

// vite.config.ts
import { defineConfig } from 'vite';
import { octane } from '@octanejs/vite-plugin';

export default defineConfig({
	plugins: [octane()],
});

// main.ts
import { createRoot } from 'octane';
import { App } from './App.tsrx';

const root = createRoot(document.getElementById('root')!);
root.render(App, { title: 'Hello world!' });

Rspack and Rsbuild are supported too. Getting started covers all three build tools, server rendering, hydration, streaming, deferred hydration, and profiling.

Status

Octane is in alpha. The runtime, compiler, and SSR/hydration paths all work, but APIs still move.

The core suite contains 3,900+ distinct behavioral tests across conformance, differential, hydration, runtime, compiler, and SSR coverage. The octane-prod project reruns the normal suite against the production compiler path, which is valuable mode coverage but is not counted again as unique tests. This is an Octane suite count, not a claim that every test was ported from React; the pinned snapshot and source-attributed React counts live in the coverage ledger and report.

Documentation

The full docs live at octanejs.dev, a site built with Octane itself. Good places to start:

• Quick start: install, mount, and the .tsrx essentials.
• Build tools: Vite, Rspack, or Rsbuild for SPA compilation and full-stack SSR.
• TSRX vs TSX/JSX: when to reach for each dialect and what TSRX unlocks.
• Differences from React: the deliberate divergences, and why everything else matching React is the point.
• Publishing libraries: package all importable authored code so applications compile libraries against their own Octane runtime.
• Bindings: the @octanejs/* ports of the React ecosystem.
• Framework integrations: use Octane with Astro, Docusaurus, or TanStack Start.

In this repository:

• Getting started: install, build tools, mount, SSR, streaming, deferred hydration, profiling.
• TSRX basics: components, hooks, control flow, class composition, text input events, strong mode.
• Server rendering and deferred hydration: the full references.
• Differences from React: the divergence contract.
• Bindings status: what each @octanejs/* package ports, its upstream version, and its known divergences.

Packages

This is a pnpm monorepo. docs/packages.md is the generated inventory; the shape of it is:

• octane is the runtime and the compiler together: rendering, the hook API, the server (SSR) and client (hydration) entry points, and the compiler itself, exposed at octane/compiler with bundler adapters at octane/compiler/vite and octane/compiler/bundler.
• The app layer: @octanejs/app-core holds the bundler-neutral config, routing, SSR, hydration codegen, and production handler, and the Vite, Rspack, and Rsbuild integrations build on it. adapter-vercel and adapter-cloudflare deploy the output; @octanejs/tanstack-start is the TanStack Start integration.
• Tooling: @octanejs/cli (create, init, doctor, analyze, add, explain, mcp add), create-octane, the npm create octane entry point onto octane create, and @octanejs/mcp-server, which exposes Octane docs and compile tooling to AI agents over MCP.
• The @octanejs/* bindings, each an Octane port of a React library: state (zustand, jotai, valtio, mobx, redux, redux-toolkit, tanstack-store), data and routing (tanstack-query, apollo-client, tanstack-router, remix-router), UI (radix, base-ui, aria, shadcn, motion, dnd-kit, sonner, floating-ui, lucide), forms and content (hook-form, tanstack-form, lexical, tiptap, mdx, i18next), data-heavy screens (tanstack-table, tanstack-virtual, recharts, visx), 3D (three), Web3 (wagmi, rainbowkit), and more.

Parity varies by package. Some are behaviorally complete, others are explicitly partial or alpha, and docs/bindings-status.md is the generated table of record: upstream version, supported surface, known divergences, SSR/hydration coverage, and when the evidence was last checked.

Contributing

Bug reports, regression tests, docs, bindings, and core fixes are all welcome. CONTRIBUTING.md covers setup, where a change belongs, the test policy, the generated files, and how pull requests are labelled and landed.

pnpm install
pnpm test
pnpm typecheck

License

MIT