{"slug": "react-flow", "name": "React Flow", "category": "dev-libs", "category_name": "Libraries and frameworks", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 7, "warners": 0, "score": 3.744, "rising": 0.35, "first": "2026-01-03", "latest": "2026-09-10", "why": "The visual canvas (React Flow) was a deliberate choice over a form-based UI", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 5, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "The visual canvas (React Flow) was a deliberate choice over a form-based UI", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "reactflow.dev", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://reactflow.dev/", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["React Flow"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 794309312, "item_id": 49644332, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644332", "by": "boxesnlines", "date": "2026-09-10", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "which is pretty great for the purpose", "excerpt": "I've actually been working on a visualizer for AI models. You prompt the model and it shows the tokens that were chosen, the weightings at each choice and the top X other tokens that could have been chosen at each node. You can then click a different path and nudge the model towards that decision, like targeted fine-tuning. It doesn't really have much practical use given the size of the models that actually get used,", "context": "", "use_case": "Node graph visualization", "switched_from": "Mermaid", "story": "Ask HN: What fun and interesting project(s) are you working on?"}, {"id": 756574642, "item_id": 47285915, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47285915", "by": "hkonte", "date": "2026-03-07", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The visual canvas (React Flow) was a deliberate choice over a form-based UI", "excerpt": "Hey HN, builder here. Happy to answer questions. The prompt structure I landed on after testing: role \u2192 context \u2192 objective \u2192 constraints \u2192 examples \u2192 output_format. That ordering follows Anthropic's guidance and consistently outperforms reordered variants in my tests. The MCP server is probably the most developer-useful part \u2014 decompose_prompt() and compile_prompt() are callable from Claude Code agents, so you can u", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: My colleague said my prompts were unreadable. I built a prompt builder"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["graph visualization", "node graph visualization", "patch editor ui", "node-based ui in react"], "compared": [{"slug": "mermaid", "name": "Mermaid", "co": 1, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "qwen", "name": "Qwen", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49643743", "title": "Ask HN: What fun and interesting project(s) are you working on?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49156682", "title": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2026)", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47770330", "title": "The cost of building a workflow editor on React Flow", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47246218", "title": "Show HN: My colleague said my prompts were unreadable. I built a prompt builder", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46933515", "title": "Show HN: Fine-tuned Qwen2.5-7B on 100 films for probabilistic story graphs", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46628336", "title": "Show HN: Fine-tuned Qwen2.5-7B on 100 films for probabilistic story graphs", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 3}, "2026-02": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 794309312, "item_id": 49644332, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644332", "by": "boxesnlines", "date": "2026-09-10", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "which is pretty great for the purpose", "excerpt": "I've actually been working on a visualizer for AI models. You prompt the model and it shows the tokens that were chosen, the weightings at each choice and the top X other tokens that could have been chosen at each node. You can then click a different path and nudge the model towards that decision, like targeted fine-tuning. It doesn't really have much practical use given the size of the models that actually get used,", "context": "", "use_case": "Node graph visualization", "switched_from": "Mermaid", "story": "Ask HN: What fun and interesting project(s) are you working on?"}, {"id": 786649444, "item_id": 49165590, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49165590", "by": "praveen_kumar", "date": "2026-08-04", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "React Flow + Trigger.dev", "excerpt": "Location: India Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Yes Technologies: Node.js, Express.js, Next.js, TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, PostgreSQL, Redis, BullMQ, Prisma, Socket.io, React, Docker, AWS, RAG Pipelines, agentic AI, LangChain, LangGraph, Pinecone, LLM Integration R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TQtVpiRiStBEMlSMkjr6o7hZaDpYOIPH/view?usp=drive_link Portfolio: https://praveen-portfolio-dev.vercel.app/ E", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2026)"}, {"id": 764343248, "item_id": 47771453, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47771453", "by": "inanothertime", "date": "2026-04-14", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I find it disrespectful how you shape React Flow, an open-source library you managed to built something on top and charge people money for. Quoting from your other website (linked from OT website): https://www.overflow.dev/ > React Flow examples show possible approaches, not production coverage. They omit edge cases, performance considerations, and maintenance paths. Overflow gives you the end result: hardened behavi", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "The cost of building a workflow editor on React Flow"}, {"id": 756574642, "item_id": 47285915, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47285915", "by": "hkonte", "date": "2026-03-07", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The visual canvas (React Flow) was a deliberate choice over a form-based UI", "excerpt": "Hey HN, builder here. Happy to answer questions. The prompt structure I landed on after testing: role \u2192 context \u2192 objective \u2192 constraints \u2192 examples \u2192 output_format. That ordering follows Anthropic's guidance and consistently outperforms reordered variants in my tests. The MCP server is probably the most developer-useful part \u2014 decompose_prompt() and compile_prompt() are callable from Claude Code agents, so you can u", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: My colleague said my prompts were unreadable. I built a prompt builder"}, {"id": 750936452, "item_id": 46933528, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46933528", "by": "graphpilled", "date": "2026-02-08", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "The frontend uses React Flow for the graph visualization.", "excerpt": "Hi HN, I'm a computer systems engineering student in Mexico who switched from film school. I built CineGraphs because my filmmaker friends and I kept hitting the same wall\u2014we'd have a vague idea for a film but no structured way to explore where it could go. Every AI writing tool we tried output generic, formulaic slop. I didn't want to build another ChatGPT wrapper, so I went a different route. The idea is simple: yo", "context": "", "use_case": "graph visualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Fine-tuned Qwen2.5-7B on 100 films for probabilistic story graphs"}, {"id": 746059523, "item_id": 46628720, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46628720", "by": "graphpilled", "date": "2026-01-14", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "The graph visualization is built with React Flow.", "excerpt": "Hi HN, I'm a computer systems engineering student in Mexico who switched from film school. I built CineGraphs because my filmmaker friends and I kept hitting the same wall\u2014we'd have a vague idea for a film but no structured way to explore where it could go. Every AI writing tool we tried output generic, formulaic slop. I didn't want to build another ChatGPT wrapper, so I went a different route. The idea is simple: yo", "context": "", "use_case": "graph visualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Fine-tuned Qwen2.5-7B on 100 films for probabilistic story graphs"}, {"id": 745259376, "item_id": 46578711, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46578711", "by": "futileboy", "date": "2026-01-11", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "play with the Web MIDI APIs and React Flow", "excerpt": "I threw together a simple patch-style synth to play with the Web MIDI APIs and React Flow. It\u2019s an early experiment and part of my personal \u201ctry things and learn\u201d site. https://www.futile.com/patch", "context": "", "use_case": "Patch editor UI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (January 2026)"}, {"id": 743772880, "item_id": 46485805, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46485805", "by": "HiPhish", "date": "2026-01-03", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I was writing a React application at work based on React Flow", "excerpt": "I really hope that functional programming and property-based testing [1][2] get taken seriously by real engineers who understand that it is important to know and understand what the program is doing. Something LLMs by their very nature cannot do. I was writing a React application at work based on React Flow[3] and I was mucking about with state management libraries (because that's what the React Flow manual recommend", "context": "", "use_case": "node-based UI in React", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What's the future of software testing and QA?"}]}