NETROOM
A React renderer for Three.js: the scene is a component tree instead of imperative calls, useFrame gives you the frame loop, useThree hands over the camera and renderer. It is not an abstraction over Three - you still need to know Three; it only changes how the scene is assembled and adds reconciliation. Version 9 requires React 19 strictly (below 19.3) and three 0.156+. It also runs in React Native via expo-gl. MIT, pmndrs, client-only.
Excalidraw is a virtual whiteboard for diagrams in a hand-drawn style: architecture sketches, user flows, wireframes and anything else that is quicker to draw than to describe. It runs in the browser with no sign-up - open a tab and start drawing. There are libraries of ready-made shapes, export to PNG and SVG, collaboration over a link with end-to-end encrypted rooms, and files you can keep locally or in your own storage. Open source, with a self-hosted option for teams.
A box of ready-made parts for react-three-fiber: OrbitControls, Environment, Text and Html, useGLTF and useTexture loaders, instancing, prebuilt materials and shader effects. It saves weeks compared with hand-writing Three.js. Import from specific paths - the package carries two dozen dependencies including troika-three-text, three-stdlib and camera-controls. Version 10 needs R3F 9, React 19 and three 0.159+. MIT, frequent releases, client-only.
Squoosh compresses images in the browser: drop a file in, pick a format and a quality, download the result. A slider puts the original and the compressed version side by side, so you can see exactly where artefacts start and stop just before them. It handles a range of formats, each with its own controls - from a single quality dial to the codec's own parameters. Nothing is uploaded: the work happens on your device, and it runs offline once installed as an app. Built by Google Chrome Labs, open source, no sign-up.
The foundation for anything 3D on the web: scenes, cameras, materials, lighting, model loaders, post-processing. Versions ship as revisions (r185) and the API breaks between them without ceremony - pin an exact version and read the migration guide. Beyond WebGL there is a WebGPU renderer and the TSL shader language behind the `three/webgpu` and `three/tsl` subpaths. It bundles no types, so install @types/three at a matching revision. It is heavy; import addons individually from `three/addons`. MIT, monthly releases.
The Cyber Swiss Army Knife, built by the UK's GCHQ. You chain operations into a "recipe" and push text or a file through it: base64, XOR, AES, DES, Blowfish, hashes, hexdumps, X.509 and IPv6 parsing, archive extraction, charset conversion. Everything runs in the browser - nothing is sent to a server, and you can download the page and use it offline. Apache 2.0 plus Crown Copyright. Invaluable for picking apart logs, dumps and suspicious payloads.
The workhorse palette generator: hit space for a new set of five, lock the one that works and keep spinning the rest. Beyond the generator there's a whole kit - extracting colours from a photo, contrast checking, colour-blindness simulation, collections and community palettes. It works without an account, but the free tier stores only 10 palettes, 1 project and 5 favourite colours. Pro at around $3/month lifts the limits and the ads. iOS app, Figma plugin.
Big news: TypeORM finally left the endless 0.3.x line - 1.1.1 shipped in September 2026, with the old 0.3.31 parked under the legacy tag. It is the same Data Mapper at heart: repositories, QueryBuilder, migrations, and a dozen dialects including MongoDB. Requires Node 20.19+ and decorators with emitDecoratorMetadata enabled. The long-standing rough edges - loose typing on returned values and surprising cascades - are still there. For a greenfield project on a single database, Prisma and Drizzle give more predictable types and migrations.
Physics for react-three-fiber scenes: the Rapier engine, written in Rust and compiled to WASM, wired in declaratively - wrap a mesh in RigidBody, add colliders, sensors, joints and forces. Faster and more accurate than the older JS engines. Note the details: the WASM bundle loads asynchronously, R3F 9 and React 19 are required, and the last release, 2.2.0, dates to November 2025. The npm manifest declares no license; the repo is MIT and Rapier itself is Apache-2.0.
A Swiss army knife for PDFs in the browser, running on your own server: merge and split, rotate, compress, convert to and from office formats, OCR, sign, redact, and chain operations through a REST API - over fifty tools in all. The point is that files never reach someone else's cloud. One docker run gets you going, and a desktop client and Kubernetes charts exist too. It is open core: the base is open source while some capabilities sit behind paid Server and Enterprise plans.
A panel for tweaking values live: useControls hands you numbers, colors, vectors and files straight inside the component, with no GUI wiring by hand. It is the de facto standard in R3F tutorials and hard to beat when dialing in shader or lighting parameters. Works with React 18 and 19 and has no tie to three. Two things to remember: it is still 0.x so the API can shift, and it pulls Radix and stitches - in production it usually hides behind a flag or a dynamic import.
A thin layer over jsonwebtoken: JwtService with sign/signAsync/verify/decode, secrets and options set in JwtModule.register or asynchronously via registerAsync with ConfigService access. It does not validate tokens for you - that's a guard's job, usually paired with @nestjs/passport and passport-jwt. If you need JWK, EdDSA or key rotation, look at jose, since jsonwebtoken is the ceiling here. Works on Nest 8 through 12.
Over twenty thousand flat illustrations in one consistent style, recolourable right in the gallery and exportable as SVG or PNG. Free, no attribution, commercial use allowed - you just cannot resell them in packs or build a competing service on top. The gallery is a shop window for a subscription design agency, so it lives exactly as long as that business does: grab what you need now and keep a copy in your own repo.
A Claude Code skill that turns a single sentence into a looping animated 3D icon as a WebP with real transparency, ready to drop into an interface. Inside is a three-step chain: a still image from GPT Image, a video from Seedance, and background removal on every frame. The seamless loop comes from a simple trick: the same still is handed to the video model as both the first and the last frame. The background is removed against a colour chosen in advance, so soft edges stay soft instead of picking up a halo. Before spending money on video the skill stops twice and waits for approval. Both models run through a paid OpenRouter key, and it needs ffmpeg and Python dependencies. The project is brand new. MIT.
A real-time strategy game about ancient warfare - roughly Age of Empires, only free and open all the way down. Thirteen civilisations from the Hellenes to the Britons, skirmishes against AI, multiplayer and an active modding scene. Volunteers at Wildfire Games have been building it since 2009; Release 28 'Boiorix' landed in February 2026 as the first build to drop the Alpha label. Code is GPL v2, art and audio CC-BY-SA 3.0. Windows, Linux and macOS builds. No ads, no freemium, no in-game purchases.
A one-shot file-sharing service: upload a file or a snippet, get a link, set a password and a download cap, and the link dies after that. It does chunked uploads with resume, instant hash-based transfer when the file already sits on the server, image compression and format conversion, plus previews for video, audio and documents. Interface is Chinese and English only. Go 1.23 with Echo and Redis, a Nuxt 3 front end, Docker images, AGPL-3.0. The public demo at send.fudaoyuan.icu returned HTTP 500 when checked.
Live foreign-exchange quotes: bid and ask prices for forex pairs and crypto, the list of tradable symbols, and a market-status check. REST endpoints plus a websocket stream, which matters if you need a ticker that ticks rather than a snapshot once a minute. A key is required and issued on signup. The free plan is tightly capped on request volume, so anything resembling a real trading panel lands on a paid tier.
One-time links for secrets: a password, API key, SSH key or file is encrypted in your browser with AES-256-GCM, only ciphertext reaches the server, and the link destroys itself once opened. The key rides in the URL fragment, so it never leaves the client at all. Lifetime is configurable from one hour to 30 days, view counts from one to ten, and files go up to 80MB. Extras include a password generator, QR codes, a CLI and a browser extension for Chrome, Edge and Brave. The service is up, free, needs no signup.
Formerly Magic MCP: connects Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf or any MCP client to the 21st.dev catalog of 12,000+ React components. The agent searches for a component, reads its real code and installs it into the project with its dependencies without leaving the editor. 21st AI drafts several variants of a screen from a prompt, and ready-made jobs build a screen in the project's style or audit the UI for accessibility and responsiveness. You can publish your own theme from CSS variables and your own components for the team. Search and publishing are free, installs are capped at two a day, and generation spends paid credits.
Data from the December open-source drive: participants, the pull requests they sent, and the organisations and projects looking for contributions. Plain JSON, no key and no signup, paginated at 99 items with a page parameter and JSONP available through callback. Good raw material for a contribution dashboard or a learning project fed by real records. Activity is tied to December, so expect little movement out of season.
Your own server for two-factor codes: all your TOTP, HOTP and Steam Guard accounts in one web interface reachable from any device, rather than chained to one specific phone. Add entries by scanning a QR or by hand, sort them into groups, and the secrets are encrypted in the database. Login can be locked behind a hardware key such as a Yubikey, and sessions expire on inactivity. By default it is single-user - registration closes after the first account. Needs PHP 8.4+ and any Laravel-supported database. AGPL-3.0.
A full PBX you install on your own Windows or Linux server, or take hosted from 3CX. It bundles call queues, IVR, call recording, video conferencing, website live chat and messaging channels - WhatsApp, Facebook, SMS - into one console, and speaks SIP to most trunk providers and desk phones. Important: this is proprietary software, not open source, despite the free tier. That free tier covers roughly 10 users and is trimmed - no call recording, CRM integration or SMS. The free terms changed during 2026, so check the current pricing page.
A cloud studio that not only generates a 3D model from text or images but also gets it game-ready: quad remeshing, polygon reduction, levels of detail and AI texturing with PBR. Its export list is the widest in its class: FBX, GLB, OBJ, STL, 3MF, USDZ, BLEND and DAE, plus a pay-as-you-go REST API. There is no rigging or animation. Starter credits are free with no card, and Basic costs $12 a month when billed annually.
A drop-in component for 3D force-directed graphs: nodes, links, zoom and click handling out of the box, built on three plus d3-force-3d. Reach for it when you need to show relationships - a network, a dependency map, a social graph - on a plain page with no React. Actively released, but the peer range is strict: three >=0.179, so an older three will not fit. It pulls in three-forcegraph, three-render-objects and kapsule, so the bundle is not small. Siblings: force-graph (2D), VR/AR builds, and react-force-graph-3d.
A library of 3D icons rendered in Blender: 120 subjects across three camera angles and four styles - clay, gradient, color and premium - which works out to over 1,400 files. You get 2400×2400 PNGs plus .blend and .fbx sources, and a Figma file and plugin, so colour and angle stay yours to tweak. Licensed CC0: commercial work, edits and remixes with no attribution required. The only paid part is early access to an online editor. By Vijay Verma.
A minimal bookmarking server: save a link and it fetches the title and favicon by itself, with room for a note on each entry. There is a dead-link checker with archive.org fallback, plus importers for Wallabag and a plain bookmarks.html export. Multiple accounts are supported, so one instance can serve a household or a small team. It is written in Lisp - the author jokes that a bookmark collection is just a list - ships as a single static binary and needs no JavaScript in the browser. The project site is up, currently at version 1.10.0.
Kanban boards without the ceremony: realtime updates with no page refresh, switching between board and list views, assignees and priorities, collapsible checklists and a decent markdown editor inside cards. Trello import, CSV and JSON export, and single sign-on through Google, GitHub or Microsoft. Licensed MIT, so self-hosting is free with no user caps at all. The hosted plans are paid - Pro from £6 per user per month, Enterprise from £10 with a dedicated instance. Actively maintained, latest stable release mid-2026.
Numerical weather forecasts by coordinates, including an astronomy-focused one: cloud cover, atmospheric transparency, seeing, humidity, wind and temperature - the set you actually need to plan a night at the telescope. Derived from NOAA and NCEP models. No key, no signup: a plain GET with latitude, longitude and a product type (ASTRO, CIVIL, METEO). Responses come as JSON or as a ready-made forecast image.
Adobe's Spectrum design system as ready-made React components, built on React Aria and React Stately, so accessibility, keyboard behaviour and i18n are handled better than almost anywhere else. The trade-off: you get Adobe's look, and restyling it is painful. Want the same foundation with your own CSS? Use react-aria-components from the same repo. Releases land constantly, Apache-2.0, and the bundle is large - import only what you render.
The Anthropic provider for the Vercel AI SDK: wires Claude into streamText and generateObject with extended thinking, prompt caching and tool calls. Useless on its own - it needs the `ai` package from the same major line (7.x today, Node 22+) and a paid ANTHROPIC_API_KEY. Take it when your app already runs on the AI SDK and you want Claude behind the same code path as every other model. If Claude is your only model forever, the thinner option is @anthropic-ai/sdk. Apache-2.0.
The OpenAI provider for the Vercel AI SDK: chat and the Responses API, structured outputs, embeddings, images and transcription, all behind the SDK's shared functions. It only works paired with the `ai` package of the same major version (7.x, Node 22+), and the key is paid. The payoff is that switching models never touches business logic - one provider line changes. If you need exotic API fields or Assistants, the official `openai` client exposes more surface. Apache-2.0.
Anthropic's official TypeScript client: Messages, SSE streaming, tool use, batches, file uploads and token counting before you send. Runs on Node, Bun, Deno and Cloudflare Workers, fully typed. It is still on 0.x and minor releases occasionally shift types, so pin it in your lockfile. Good when Claude is the only provider you talk to; if you juggle several, Vercel's `ai` with provider packages is easier. The key is paid, with no free allowance. MIT.
A GraphQL client with a normalised cache: one mutation updates every component reading the same entities. Version 4 reworked the internals - rxjs is now a peer dependency, graphql 16 and 17 are supported, React 17 through 19. Take it when the schema is large and you genuinely need the cache. For a handful of queries it is overkill: urql is lighter, and graphql-request plus TanStack Query is easier to debug. MIT, frequent releases.
The Apollo GraphQL server engine: query parsing, schema, plugins, caching, tracing. Since v4 it is no longer an HTTP server but a core you attach a web layer to - Express 5, Fastify, or the standalone one. v5 needs Node 20+ and graphql 16.11+; apollo-server-express and friends are dead and migration is mandatory. You rarely install it directly under Nest - @nestjs/apollo holds it as a peer. Outside the Apollo ecosystem, graphql-yoga or mercurius are the alternatives.
ByteDance's UI kit and antd's closest neighbour in scope: the same tables, forms and calendars, just different typography and its own token system. The upside is Arco Design Lab, where you build a theme visually and install it as a package. The downside: the ecosystem and English documentation are noticeably thinner than antd's, and issue threads are often in Chinese. Releases keep coming, but slowly - the 2.x line has run for years. MIT.
A set of unstyled, accessible primitives: combobox, menu, dialog, tabs, tooltip. Unlike Radix it ships as one package and composes from small pieces - the state hook is separate from the components, which makes unusual widgets much easier to assemble. The author releases almost weekly, yet the version is still 0.4.x: the API does shift, so pin it. One dependency, MIT. Composing a component takes a few more lines than with a pre-baked kit, but you get exactly the behaviour you asked for.
Editors' picks