FAQ & Non-Goals

Frequently asked questions

Is Kin Store production-ready?

The core API (createStore, withPlugins, derive), the official plugins, and the React bindings are all covered by tests that run on every publish. That said, the project is young: small community, short track record. Weigh those as real inputs to your own risk assessment, not something the docs will talk you out of.

Does it work outside React?

@kin-store/core and @kin-store/plugins have zero framework dependency: a store is a plain value with get/set/subscribe, usable from any JS/TS environment (vanilla, a framework's own reactivity, a worker, a Node/Deno backend). @kin-store/react is the only official framework binding published today.

Is there official Vue, Svelte, or Solid support?

Not today. Nothing in the architecture is React-specific (useStore is a thin useSyncExternalStore wrapper), so a similar binding for another framework is plausible future work, but no such package exists or is published yet. subscribe is plain enough to wire into another framework's reactivity by hand in the meantime.

Does it work with SSR / Next.js?

See the Next.js example. SSR mainly changes two things: where the store instance lives (constructed per-request or via a provider, not a module-level singleton shared across requests) and when persist is allowed to touch localStorage (skipped on the server, hydrated explicitly on the client).

Is there a DevTools integration?

The official devtools plugin connects a store to the Redux DevTools Extension for time-travel debugging, action replay, and jump-to-state. It's opt-in like every other plugin; a store that never registers it carries no devtools code.

Can reducers or methods be async?

methods can be async directly; a method is just a function with full access to get/set/dispatch. reducers are pure and synchronous by design, (state, ...args) => nextState, so async work (a fetch call) belongs in a method that calls dispatch or set once the result is ready, not in the reducer itself.

How does Kin Store handle server state, caching, and refetching?

It doesn't, on purpose. createStore/withPlugins model state your client owns; server-owned data (cached responses, request dedup, background refetch) is TanStack Query's job, not Kin Store's. See the TanStack Query examples for two ways to split the two: client state as one withPlugins store, or one createStore per field.

Does persist or broadcast handle conflict resolution for concurrent edits?

No. persist writes state to storage and reads it back; broadcast mirrors state across tabs with last-write-wins by wall-clock time, so if two tabs change state within the same millisecond, one change is silently dropped. Neither merges concurrent edits. For state that genuinely needs that (real-time collaborative editing), reach for a CRDT library instead.

What's the bundle size?

createStore is 231 B gzipped, withPlugins is 1.0 KB, and derive is 438 B, each measured independently since you only pay for what you .use(). Plugins and the React bindings add their own (small) cost on top only when imported.

Where do I ask a question or report a bug?

GitHub Discussions for questions and design feedback, Issues for bugs.

Non-goals

Kin Store has no request cache, no dedup, no background refetch; server state (cached responses, in-flight data) is TanStack Query's job, and createStore/withPlugins only ever model what the client owns.

State changes only through set or a dispatched reducer. Nothing mutates a draft behind your back unless you explicitly opt into the immer plugin, so there's no implicit, proxy-based reactivity happening anywhere by default.

It's also not a schema-validation library: state shape is whatever TypeScript type you give createStore, and validating external input (an API response, a form submission) is left to a dedicated library. And it's not multi-framework yet; @kin-store/react is the only official binding, with no Vue, Svelte, or Solid package. If you're interested in Kin Store and want bindings for other frameworks, please file an issue.

Neither persist nor broadcast does conflict resolution beyond last-write-wins, so don't reach for either as a substitute for a CRDT on state that genuinely needs merged concurrent edits.

Finally, Kin Store isn't trying to out-feature Redux. There's no built-in serializable action log format, no time-travel outside the devtools plugin, and no code-generation step. The comparison page covers those tradeoffs directly.