Welcome to the archive. This is a record of our exhaustion.
Read the open letter at: please-fix-next.com
Next.js claims to be "the framework of choice when it matters, for performance, efficiency and developer experience." official website
But we, the developers who built its reputation, who vouched for it to our teams, and who shipped our best products on it, have watched it drift.
Creeping complexity. Vendor lock-in. Magic hidden behind opaque walls and experimental flags. Each release feels more like a marketing show than a developers' party.
And when we push back - file issues, open discussions, leave comments - our voices get buried. There are long-standing discussions about issues and requests that have been around for years. The GitHub issue tracker has been called "a crown jewel of the dumpster fire — where hopes and issues come to die." ¹
The answer is always the same: power comes with complexity.
The recent ViNext experiment by Cloudflare proved one undeniable thing: it doesn't need to be this complex. They swapped the underlying engine and reimplemented the Next.js API surface in one week. 94% coverage. 4× faster builds. 57% smaller bundles. Deployable anywhere.
The truth is now out there. The complexity, the sloppiness, the hacks, and the workarounds - they are no longer a technical necessity. From this point on, they are an architectural choice.
This isn't about whining or pointing fingers. It's not about taking sides.
It's about us - the developers!
We know the pain points better than anyone. Because marketing is one thing, but midnight critical debugging is ours alone.
The goal is to constructively document what we actually need - not what's fancy, not what looks good in a keynote. And show it to whoever is open to listen, whoever that might be.
Improve from within, or wrap from the outside - both outcomes require the same thing: enough developers standing in the same place, saying the same thing, loud enough that it can't be written off as noise.
That's what this is.
That is the count. That is the signal. Your star is your signature on the open letter.
Head over to the Discussions. Share your story, your broken workflows, and what made your hair gray. Real change only happens when our pain points are compiled in one place, rather than buried under thousands of minor doc updates and font-size PRs in the official repo. Keep it constructive. Bring the receipts.
Use the power of unity. Our needs aren't noise - they're backed by years of real pain. Do not settle for bad Developer Experience just for the "greater good" of a platform. Share the site with your teams and your network.
The web is global. Copy /data/en/main.en.mdx, translate it into your native language, and open a PR. The more languages we support, the louder the message becomes.
No personal attacks. The frustration is with the direction, not the people.