React Components as the API

What if React Components were the new API? Meeting developers where they are today, right in their React frontends? What if state management and third-party SaaS workflows could be abstracted away in a single React component (and maybe a hook or two)?

Why now? Better styling primitives for components that expose a functional skeleton UI that can be integrated with custom themes. Usually, this happens with a mix of CSS-in-JS or other theming patterns. 

Authentication — Most authentication applications offer a React SDK — everything from Auth0 to AWS Amplify to upstarts like Clerk. These usually include components for SignIn, SignUp, and user information.

Real-time backends — Not quite a component, but DriftDB exposes a useSharedState hook that acts like useState but is synchronized with other clients. Others are more specific, like Liveblocks, which exposes a createRoomContext hook that shows presence (“who else is viewing this document”)

Search — Algolia’s DocSearch can be added as a simple React component. 

Chat and activity feeds — Stream has a React Component that embeds a chat or activity feed into your application. 

Image CDN — Vercel’s next/image encapsulates a CDN and optimized caching workflow behind a React component. It does lazy loading, blur, resizing, and more.

Forms — There are many form startups that ship a React component for automatically uploading responses.