We are the developers who built the reputation of Next.js. We advocated for it in our companies, taught it to our teams, and shipped our best work on it.
But it became something we dread opening on a Monday morning.
Not because we’re bad developers. Because somewhere between versions, the joy left. Simple things became puzzles. Deployments became rituals. The “magic” that used to save us time became a proprietary, hidden layer that we have to fight against. It feels like dark magic now — and not the good kind.
We found tricks, wrote workarounds, we patched the leaks, we moved on.
Cloudflare rebuilt the core Next.js experience in one week. A tiny team. Vite underneath. 4× faster builds. 57% smaller bundles. Runs anywhere.
Complexity isn’t a technical necessity anymore. It’s now a choice.
We’re not asking for an overnight rewrite. We’re asking for a change in the philosophy — one where simplicity is the default, the web platform is respected, and the framework belongs to the whole web again. As it was.
This is a sincere plea from the people who remember why they loved it.
— Andrey, and 1,024 developers who’d like that feeling back.