Skills.sh, Stealing React Components, React has changed, better-themes, Server Action Data Fetching, opensrc

Skills.sh

This week Vercel launched Skills.sh. A collection of reusable capabilities for AI agents that you can install with one command. There are already 4,500+ unique agent skills, covering popular tools like BetterAuth, Remotion, and Stripe

► Building a Hybrid AI Chatbot with Next.js 16

Sam Selikoff walks through building a chatbot app using new Next.js 16 features. He shows how to stream AI responses from OpenAI, handle optimistic UI updates, and preview loading states with the new Suspense DevTools

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⚡️ Sponsor

Add Real-User Core Web Vitals Monitoring to Your Next.js App in Minutes.

next-cwv-monitor is a real-user monitoring (RUM) platform providing self-hosted performance insights with custom event tracking, route-level visibility, and zero vendor lock-in.

Built specifically for Next.js teams, it captures actual user metrics (LCP, INP, CLS, TTFB, FCP) and correlates them with the events that drive your business - signups, purchases, conversions.

📙 Articles, Tutorials

Can You Fetch Data with React Server Actions?

Before replacing fetch with React Server Actions, you'll want to read this. This post tests whether Server Actions work for fetching data on the client by building a dashboard app and measuring its performance with both Server Actions and regular fetch

useOptimistic Won't Save You

Explains why optimistic UI in React is still hard, even with React 19’s new useOptimistic hook. The article walks through common bugs like flickering state and race conditions, explains how Concurrent React and transitions add more complexity, and shows that useOptimistic alone doesn't solve ordering issues

How to Steal Any React Component

A clever hack that turns React's dev-friendly features against itself. React Developer Tools works by reading React Fiber data that's exposed in the browser. This post shows how to use the same data from live websites and reconstruct components with AI

React has changed, your Hooks should too

The post looks at how modern React (18+) pushes us away from overusing useEffect and toward cleaner, render‑driven patterns. It covers common Hook mistakes, better use of derived state, custom Hooks as true encapsulation, and newer tools like useSyncExternalStore, transitions, and deferred values

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📦 Projects / Packages / Tools

𝕏 Remotion Skills

Remotion, the framework for creating videos programmatically with React, dropped their Agent skill this week, and the motion designs coming out of it are absolutely nuts. Alex Sidorenko demonstrates how you can use it to create your own videos

opensrc

opensrc is a small CLI tool that pulls down the source code of npm packages or GitHub repos so AI coding agents can understand how things work internally, not just the types

better-themes

A lightweight theme manager for React apps that focuses on doing theming “right” from the start. It avoids theme flashes on load, supports system dark mode, and works well with SSR and SSG

Next.js Boilerplate v6

Probably the longest‑maintained Next.js starter boilerplate out there. Version 6 ships with a zero‑setup local Postgres database, fresh updates to everything included (Sentry, Vitest, Storybook, etc.), and all the latest Next.js goodies like the React Compiler, a faster dev server, and more

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⚡️ Sponsor

The Tigris Storage SDK: Giving you code you can read at a glance

Stop wrestling with AWS S3 boilerplate in your Next.js apps. The new Tigris Storage SDK gives you simple get, put, and remove calls with first-class TypeScript support — storage that feels like JavaScript.

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🌈 Related

Interview: David Haz, creator of React Bits

An interview with David Haz about building React Bits, an open‑source library with 100+ animated and interactive React components. He talks about growing the project to 30k GitHub stars, balancing it with a full‑time frontend job, and how Motion, GSAP, and AI fit into his workflow

Vercel vs Netlify vs Cloudflare: Serverless Cold Starts Compared

This benchmark measures how much cold starts slow down Next.js apps on popular serverless platforms. Using the same Next.js app across providers, the results show Cloudflare as the fastest and most consistent, Netlify as the slowest (even when warm), and Vercel performing well for pages but suffering frequent cold starts on APIs

The Next Two Years of Software Engineering

Over the next two years, the day-to-day work of developers may look very different. Addy Osmani explores how AI is changing software engineering and what developers should do to stay relevant

The Astro Technology Company joins Cloudflare

The Astro web framework is joining Cloudflare. Astro will stay open-source, MIT-licensed, and platform‑agnostic, with the same roadmap and governance. With more resources, Astro can keep experimenting with performance, and add pressure and inspiration for how Next.js develops

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On Feb 7-8, Certificates.dev will allow free access to its JavaScript Certification Training. This means 48 hours of free, unlimited access to structured training experience, including 17 theory lessons, 18 coding challenges, and 42 pop quiz questions. You also get access to a trial exam to test your readiness and experience the assessment platform, complete with multiple-choice questions and a coding challenge.