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The month. npmx
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npmx - a fast, modern browser for the npm registry. You've definitely heard about this project, and it’s probably got you just as excited as it has me. We've had a month of exciting and invaluable experience, and we've got some crazy plans ahead. I'm Alex, a project maintainer and one of the many who have been lucky enough to witness the formation of npmx from the front lines. This is an article reflecting on the project, warm stories, wonderful people, and, of course, a look into the future. I hope I can convey this marvelous experience and give you the opportunity to feel it with me.
The moment
London, winter, one of the longest seasons of rain and complete absence of sun. January is considered the most depressing month here. At this time, AI is taking over the world, and many large OSS projects are either declining or being bought by corporations. I work on my small projects day after day to distract myself from this race and relax. During breaks, I share solutions on bluesky and scroll through my feed. Everything happens in the same way on a daily basis - days that have been repeating for years - but on that day, one detail seemed unusual.
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More and more people, whom I always read with such interest, began to talk about a certain project for npm. No details, no links, no information on Google. Nothing, but it was enough to grab my attention. Although I am an introvert, it is people who have always inspired me to move forward. And I saw many people who are important to me in this stream (and I will see hundreds more, but more on that later).
🙋♂️ so ... for reasons: I would love to know people's frustrations with: - the current https://npmjs.com - admin user flows on npm web ui (and cli, locally) 🙏
Acquaintance
This went on for several days - I continued to finish my projects robindoc.com & atsky.app, London remained cloudy, the world of development became increasingly alien to me, and time and again I came across a project that had already piqued my interest. It was no longer just about people. The idea of building a project focused on developers in OSS today seemed bold, crazy.
Did I see only a browser for npm in these posts? No, definitely not, but I'm getting ahead of myself again. And now I finally found a link. And it was a match. The idea, the design, the views, the values. Later, we joked that npmx was suspiciously similar to my projects by vibe. But these values are a reflection of all of us, and that's why npmx attracted so many wonderful people. At that moment, I was surfing the site with interest, enjoying the speed and design, and... Of course, I started looking at myself and my packages. Looking at the documentation, statistics, vulnerabilities, versions, metadata, release channels - so much new information was gathered on one page in a convenient interface.
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Well, almost convenient - the release channels didn't really work out. My long versions in the experimental channel of some packages broke the interface.
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Out of habit, I open devtools, quickly find the cause, and decide to write about it so that I don't get caught up in it in the future. To my great delight, I find a panel with all the links in the footer.
Contributions
Both Discord and GitHub are invaluable parts of this project that are difficult to talk about separately. But first, a little about the code. I already mentioned that this project attracted me because of the people behind it. And here I omitted an important detail - despite the fact that I have spent almost all of my career working with React & Next, most of my subscriptions are to wonderful authors from other ecosystems — Svelte, OCaml, Astro, Vue.
What am I getting at? npmx turned out to be written in Vue & Nuxt, an ecosystem I'm practically unfamiliar with. But the bug I found was simple, and my interest was strong. So, without thinking twice, I forked it, read the contributing guide, searched, fixed, checked, PR, merged, and released. Did I go through the steps too quickly? Actually, that's exactly how it went. I think installing the dependencies took longer than the rest of the cycle.
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My interest was piqued once again.
The whole process was unexpectedly simple. Once you open the project, you immediately stop noticing that this technology is new to you. You just feel it, and that's how it all works. And if you do miss something, the tooling is already set up to check every part, from stability to accessibility. And if there are still gaps after that, you will be reviewed by some of the most experienced people in this ecosystem, who do so honestly, warmly, and wholeheartedly, trying to teach and help you.
Collaborations
And here we return to a familiar topic - people. I have mentioned this factor many times and will mention it many more later. It is the people behind the project that make it special. More than 200 people, many of whom I had the pleasure of working with to come up with ideas, make corrections, check things, and just communicate.
one of the most radical actions the @npmx.dev community took was talking with every single human being who joined our chat server. more than 500 people were welcomed, encouraged to join our open conversations, ask for guidance, share their own ideas, and jump into action when they see opportunities
This is a place where time flows differently. Where up to 100 people participate in decision-making, backing up their arguments with experience and sources. Where ideas are born on the fly and immediately find executors. Where assumptions are backed up by advice from experts in a11y, SEO, performance, etc. Where translations for many languages are added with a single message asking a question. Where everyone works on different things, but still on the same.
We heatedly discussed button designs, decided on the cursor, tested the search functionality, worked out the accessibility of every detail, and suggested ideas for graphs (and watched in amazement as Alec Lloyd Probert solved them quickly and elegantly). This list could go on forever, and each of these stories deserves its own article.
This is a place where friends gather. We can't say how long we will continue to develop npmx, but these connections will remain with us for many years to come. And I am happy to play my part in this.
I've fallen in love with developing with people again 💙 The atmosphere, the ideas, the knowledge, and communication with these people are definitely worth every second
Maintainer
Almost a week had passed, and I continued to complete task after task that bothered me. At the same time, without me even noticing, the whole project became familiar and dear to me, as if I had been working on it for the last few years. We consulted, reviewed, found mistakes, corrected, and made some bugs. But day after day, the project continued to grow exponentially. "How quickly other people’s kids grow", joked I to myself.
It was growth that I would not have believed possible, but here it was an exception - there were amazing people behind this project. Meanwhile, I had practically completed my internal pool of tasks, as had many other participants in the story. Conversations about problems were replaced by discussions about plans, architecture, and standards. Conversations without a source of truth, without managers, without customers, without needs. Built around one goal - to give the web environment and OSS a new life. And, to my infinite happiness, we agreed on the vision for the next steps. And against this backdrop, I was invited to join the maintainers team.
For the first time, I have zero issues in my internal queue for https://npmx.dev I don't know how we managed it given how fast it was, but we made the service *even* faster (and this incredible team doesn't stop)
I had already grown to love this project and, of course, was very grateful and happy to receive such an invitation. But for me, it's more than just a role, perhaps even more important than on everyday job. I came to the project because of the people, and for the same reason I fell in love with it. Every member of an open community can either empower others or destroy their interest at all. Will I be able to maintain my enthusiasm for a long time, and how long will I be able to be an active member of this community...
I had a warm and honest conversation with the project stewards, and we agreed on almost everything, as we did with all the participants in the story before. And most importantly, first and foremost, we are simply making our everyday experience better, together and for everyone. We agreed that I will stay here as long as I can, and, as it seems now, the energy of this community will keep me warm for a long time to come.
Marathon
Meanwhile, the project continued to move forward. More and more ideas, more and more communication, more and more issues and PRs. We were accelerating at an incredible pace, working more and more every day. During breakfast, you discuss an idea in Discord, then reviews, issues, plans, *cut*, and suddenly it's 3 a.m., and you're still actively discussing the next PR. On each of these nights, we successfully gained milliseconds and literally every micro-reaction. And the next morning, during breakfast, you go into the chat, see the discussion of the idea, *cut*...
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An incredible pace, exponential growth every day, dozens of ideas, hundreds of issues per day, thousands of messages. At the same time, every day new experienced and strong participants arrive, ready to solve problems from the very first minute. A pace that any startup dreams of, a team that any corporation would envy. Yes, I am once again bringing you back to people, because behind all this magic there were already almost 500 people. Each of whom not only sincerely loves the project, but also the people around us. This is what distinguishes it from corporations and startups. So the next step, unexpected and strange to many outsiders, was taken - we announced a vacation.
Vacation
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One week, complete blocking of channels and repositories, disabling discussions and stopping updates, canceling invitations to Discord, pausing posts and technical ideas. And all this in a project that was already used by tens of thousands of people. But it was much more than just a desire to rest. We cannot create a wonderful experience for users if we don't make the experience better for each other. It seems that this philosophy was taken from nuxt and vite, but here we gave it a completely new and warm format.
In the remaining days, we fixed bugs, checked stability, reviewed PRs, and prepared to go out and touch the grass. Then we all got together, celebrated another wonderful day, and went to rest with anticipation of our plans.
For me, this was the first time in my entire career that I wasn't programming because I wanted to (*rather than because of illness or relocation*). And I did what I always loved to do - take leisurely walks with my camera through the green corners of London. At the same time, it was a great opportunity to tackle some long-standing projects - articles, design, and social media.
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We simply lived and did what we enjoyed, letting go of the usual programming race for a while. Touching the grass wasn't a strict rule, and we touched the snow, trees, and our beloved pets. Sometimes the rule was completely disregarded, so we touched the grass like this:
So to avoid being a parent OR working on my @npmx.dev PRs I made a thing #touchgrass https://github.com/lukeocodes/touch-grass
At the same time, we discussed tastes, countries, shops, cheeses, pizza, places, hobbies, plans, and jokes. Practically strangers to each other, from different corners of the earth - with similar questions, tastes, and problems - we turned these evenings into heartfelt online gatherings.
And then we celebrated 2,000 stars.
The vacation was coming to an end, and a big release was ahead of us. March 3rd, the day when we would openly talk about ourselves and our future for the first time. A month of the project's life was already behind us, a month of wonderful experiences and warm stories. But behind these stories, I left out another, equally important detail - ideas and meaning. And when to talk about greatness if not after a vacation?
Reasons
"A fast, modern browser" is a phrase you've heard many times before. After all, speed and ease of surfing are important factors, and you'll feel it every fraction of a second you spend on the site. I love this phrase - it's very concise and says a lot, but still not everything.
Behind this project are ideas and visions that we have gathered over years of interacting with services. Everyone has their own experience and priorities, which makes it difficult to choose a single vector. The service is growing in many directions at once: accessibility, community features, data-focused tools, ownership, speed, and so on. But if we simplify it all into one rule, it would probably be "everything you need for development, fast and for everyone."
Fortunately, we know how to achieve this. Most of us have created tools and services before, many for the atproto ecosystem and with a focus on user experience. These are hundreds of experts, each in their own field, who came to npmx to work on a project they love and value. Not just as a service, but as a tool we use every day.
Npmx is much more than a browser - it is a service focused on people. Its goal is to provide quick and high-quality choices, where metrics are based on the opinions of other participants, and where the interface is designed for quick search results rather than retention.
I enjoy working on ideas, optimizations, and design in this system. There are still many opportunities ahead, and we are just getting ready to take action.
The Future
And now we have gone through this wonderful month together. I am finishing this part literally in the last moments before the launch of the service, and perhaps you have even noticed how feeling of this article has changed.
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Looking back on those January days, I realize how much has changed. Not only with me and the project, but with the entire ecosystem. Community support, OSS activation, changes in npm, and independent interfaces for services. Today, we casually talk about a new service with a convenient interface for GitHub, but just a couple of weeks ago, we were jokingly discussing the post "when githubX". "Bold", I would have said then, and "inevitable", I say without a doubt today.
All we needed was people. And luckily, we stumbled upon that wonderful series of posts. We spent this month together building connections, ideas, and architecture. It takes a lot of time, but we are close to completing the strongest foundation. And we are getting ready to build even more amazing opportunities. With a focus on people, their experience, their convenience, and their connections.
Just as we found value in each other, any project can become the center of a network of wonderful connections.
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We build in open source, but the most valuable stuff happens in our chats and conversations with each other. Join us ❤️