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Exhale

0012. Frontend framework: React 19 + Vite SPA embedded in the binary

  • Status: Accepted
  • Date: 2026-11-06

Context — what it has to do

Section titled “Context — what it has to do”
  • Compile to static files served by the Go binary: no Node on the user’s machine.
  • A highly interactive, data-dense UI: tables, rich forms, calendar, charts, the observability dashboard, live updates, PWA, i18n, accessibility, dark mode.
  • A strong component ecosystem, orval support, and an appeal to contributors.

Options

Section titled “Options”

React 19 + Vite, Svelte 5, SolidJS, Vue 3, Next.js.

Decision

Section titled “Decision”

React 19 + Vite in SPA mode, with React Compiler.

  • Node is used only at development and build time.
  • vite build → web/dist → //go:embed → a single binary. Unknown routes fall back to index.html.
  • This is the same pattern used by Grafana, Memos, Gitea, PocketBase and Syncthing.

Next.js is rejected on first principles. Its value (SSR, server components, API routes) needs a Node runtime, and here the server is Go.

Development workflow

Section titled “Development workflow”

Two processes: Vite (HMR, proxies /api) and the Go server (rebuilt on save). Both are exposed as mise tasks: mise run dev:web, mise run dev:api.

Consequences — cost we accept

Section titled “Consequences — cost we accept”

A larger bundle than Svelte. This barely matters on a LAN with a service worker cache.

Revisit when

Section titled “Revisit when”

Bundle size hurts the PWA on mobile data, or Svelte’s chart and calendar ecosystem catches up.