Redwood
by Tom Preston-Werner, Peter Pistorius, Rob Cameron, David Price, and more than 250 amazing contributors (see end of file for a full list).
Bighorn Epoch (current development epoch)
NOTE: This section of the Readme is aspirational for the current development epoch we call Bighorn. Bighorn has not yet been released, but when it is, it will fulfill the promises of what you read below. If you’d like to help us on this journey, please say hi in the Community Forums!
Redwood is a framework for quickly creating React-based web applications that provide an amazing end user experience. Our goal is to be simple and approachable enough for use in prototypes and hackathons, but performant and comprehensive enough to evolve into your next startup.
We accomplish this in two primary ways:
-
Redwood is opinionated and full-stack. We’ve chosen the best technologies in the JS/TS ecosystem and beautifully integrated them into a cohesive framework that lets you get things done instead of endlessly evaluating technology options. You can get started using Redwood without a backend, but the framework really shines when you’re building a data driven application. Our transparent data fetching and optional GraphQL API make building and growing your application easier than you expect!
-
Redwood’s declarative data fetching and simple form submission features are built on top of RSC + Server Actions and simplify common use cases so you can focus on your users’ experience. Creating the best, most responsive user interfaces requires reasoning about whether code should execute on the server or the client. Redwood makes it easy to choose the best execution context for your code by leveraging the power of React Server Components.
The entire framework is built with TypeScript, so you get type safety from the router to the database and everywhere in-between. If you’d rather build your app with JavaScript, you can do that too, and still enjoy great code completion features in your favorite editor.
TRY BIGHORN: While Bighorn does not yet have a production release, we do publish the latest code as canaries, and we welcome you to experiment with them! The best way to get familiar with these canaries is to keep an eye on the Redwood Blog.
Arapahoe Epoch (current stable release)
Redwood is an opinionated, full-stack, JavaScript/TypeScript web application framework designed to keep you moving fast as your app grows from side project to startup.
At the highest level, a Redwood app is a React frontend that talks to a custom GraphQL API. The API uses Prisma to operate on a database. Out of the box you get tightly integrated testing with Jest, logging with Pino, and a UI component catalog with Storybook. Setting up authentication (like Auth0) or CSS frameworks (like Tailwind CSS) are a single command line invocation away. And to top it off, Redwood's architecture allows you to deploy to either serverless providers (e.g. Netlify, Vercel) or traditional server and container providers (e.g. AWS, Render) with nearly no code changes between the two!
By making a lot of decisions for you, Redwood lets you get to work on what makes your application special, instead of wasting cycles choosing and re-choosing various technologies and configurations. Plus, because Redwood is a proper framework, you benefit from continued performance and feature upgrades over time and with minimum effort.
TUTORIAL: The best way to get to know Redwood is by going through the extensive Redwood Tutorial. Have fun!
QUICK START: You can install and run a full-stack Redwood application on your machine with only a couple commands. Check out the Quick Start guide to get started.
DOCS: Visit the full RedwoodJS Documentation for extensive reference docs and guides.
About
Redwood is the latest open source project initiated by Tom Preston-Werner, cofounder of GitHub (most popular code host on the planet), creator of Jekyll (one of the first and most popular static site generators), creator of Gravatar (the most popular avatar service on the planet), author of the Semantic Versioning specification (powers the Node packaging ecosystem), and inventor of TOML (an obvious, minimal configuration language used by many projects).
Technologies
We are obsessed with developer experience and eliminating as much boilerplate as possible. Where existing libraries elegantly solve our problems, we use them; where they don't, we write our own solutions. The end result is a JavaScript development experience you can fall in love with!
Here's a quick taste of the technologies a standard Redwood application will use:
If you'd like to use our optional built-in GraphQL API support, here's our stack:
Roadmap
A framework like Redwood has a lot of moving parts; the Roadmap is a great way to get a high-level overview of where the framework is relative to where we want it to be. And since we link to all of our GitHub project boards, it's also a great way to get involved! Roadmap
Why is it called Redwood?
(A history, by Tom Preston-Werner)
Where I live in Northern California there is a type of tree called a redwood. Redwoods are HUGE, the tallest in the world, some topping out at 115 meters (380 feet) in height. The eldest of the still-living redwoods sprouted from the ground an astonishing 3,200 years ago. To stand among them is transcendent. Sometimes, when I need to think or be creative, I will journey to my favorite grove of redwoods and walk among these giants, soaking myself in their silent grandeur.
In addition, Redwoods have a few properties that I thought would be aspirational for my nascent web app framework. Namely:
-
Redwoods are beautiful as saplings, and grow to be majestic. What if you could feel that way about your web app?
-
Redwood pinecones are dense and surprisingly small. Can we allow you to get more done with less code?
-
Redwood trees are resistant to fire. Surprisingly robust to disaster scenarios, just like a great web framework should be!
-
Redwoods appear complex from afar, but simple up close. Their branching structure provides order and allows for emergent complexity within a simple framework. Can a web framework do the same?
And there you have it.
Contributors
A gigantic "Thank YOU!" to everyone below who has contributed to one or more Redwood projects: Framework, Website, Docs, and Create-Redwood Template. 🚀
Core Team: Leadership
 Amy Haywood Dutton |
 David Price |
 Tobbe Lundberg |
 Tom Preston-Werner |
Core Team: Maintainer and Community Leads
 David Thyresson maintainer |
 Daniel Choudhury maintainer |
 Kris Coulson maintainer |
 Keith T Elliot community |
 Barrett Burnworth community |
 Josh Walker maintainer |
Founders
Tom Preston-Werner |
 Peter Pistorius |
 Rob Cameron |
David Price |
Core Team: Alumni
All Contributors
Redwood projects (mostly) follow the all-contributions specification. Contributions of any kind are welcome.