A thin, full-stack, web framework.
Features:
- Portable HTML, CSS and JS, thanks to Lit (SSR).
- Highly responsive during dev. and build, thanks to Vite.
- Minimal dependency footprint for its runtime and your distributable.
- Embrace web standards like Custom Elements (aka Web Components) or the WhatWG Fetch API.
- A streamlined Developer eXperience for building, instead of fiddling around.
Bootstrap a project with the create gracile@latest command:
npm create gracile@latest
pnpm create gracile@latest
bun create gracile@latest
yarn create gracile@latest
For more information, head over to the documentation website (gracile.js.org).
Gracile is powered by Vite and Lit SSR.
With it, you can achieve:
- File-based routing with efficient code-splitting
- Server Side Rendering
- Static Site Generation
- Server integration (
Request/Response) for Express, Hono… - Full-stack Custom Elements (Lit), with hydration
- Content websites
- Multi or Single Page Applications
- Progressive enhancements (no JS fallbacks, smart hydration…)
- And more, via Add-ons (Markdown, Metadata, SVG…)
All that, with a few conventions, a standard-oriented approach and a very contained footprint 🤏.
Web Components, TypeScript, SASS, Lit, and other DX perks are all at your fingertips; while remaining optional.
Thanks to the Vite modular architecture, and Node.js versatility, developer experience is smoothed up across the board, while in development and when building for production.
Write the same markup, styling and scripting languages for both server and
client side.
The ones that you already know and use everywhere else: HTML, CSS and
JavaScript.
Simplicity doesn't mean obfuscation. You're still in charge without abandoning flexibility to your framework.
Built with a platform-minded philosophy. Every time a standard can be leveraged
for a task, it should be.
It also means fewer vendor-specific idioms to churn on and a more portable
codebase overall.
Stop re-implementing the wheel, and embrace future-proof APIs, you'll thank
yourself later!
The DX bar has been constantly raised, alongside developers' expectations about
their everyday tooling.
The "Vanilla" community is full of gems, in a scattered way.
Gracile provides an integrated, out-of-the-box experience while keeping
non-core opinions as opt-ins.
Finding the right balance between convenience and freedom is tricky.
Hopefully, more and more patterns will be established in the full-stack JS
space.
Gracile is inspired by those widespread practices that will make you feel at home.
All in all, the Gracile framework is just Vite, Lit SSR and a very restricted set of helpers and third parties.
Check its dependency tree on npmgraph, you'll see by yourself.
Also, everything is done to keep your Vite configuration as pristine as possible. Augmenting an existing project can be done in a pinch, with no interference.
Speed is not the main goal for Gracile, that's because it is just the sane
default you'll start with.
Avoiding complex template transformations, or surgically shipping client-side JS
are just a few facets of what makes Gracile a "do more with less" power tool.
See CONTRIBUTING.md.
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Airman's Odyssey