Would it make sense for React Router v8 to explore adopting react-router-auto-routes as its file-based router?

[kenn]

Hey everyone 👋

Now that we're discussing React Router v8 planning, I wanted to ask if there’s interest from the maintainers (and the broader community) in potentially upstreaming react-router-auto-routes as an optional file-based routing solution for v8.

It’s already been merged into Epic Stack (PR #1051 and #1053) (which is kind of the flagship RR starter), and it’s getting good feedback from teams who previously used remix-flat-routes. It is a superset of that — keeping the same mental model and compile-time route generation — while adding frictionless colocation with cleaner conventions.

What it does

react-router-auto-routes scans your app/routes/ directory with zero config:

// app/routes.ts
import { autoRoutes } from "react-router-auto-routes"

export default autoRoutes()

It’s ESM-only, no extra runtime, and works great with RR v7 today.

Key features

It supports every conventions we're used to (fs-routes, remix-flat-routes), while keeping the API surface small. I'm in the Less is More camp.

• Folder + flat conventions (you can mix both styles)
• Colocated layouts at the same level, not in the parent
• Colocated files with + (e.g. +helper.ts won’t become a route)
• Optional segments like ($lang) → :lang?
• Splats via $.tsx
• Multi-root mounts for monorepos/sub-apps:
• Migration CLI from remix-flat-routes

Why bring this up now

The v8 planning thread #14468 and the open governance post encourage small, focused proposals that reduce friction for users.

A big portion of the ecosystem already uses file-based routing. The current @react-router/fs-routes works, but many people find it limiting — hence the popularity of remix-flat-routes. My goal was to bridge those worlds with something simple, modern, and extensible.

My ask

Would the maintainers be open to:

• Considering react-router-auto-routes as the base for @react-router/fs-routes v8, or
• Bringing it under the org as something like @react-router/auto-routes?

I’m happy to transfer the repo, maintain it under RR’s governance, and adapt to any constraints or naming conventions. I'm also open to adding migration from config-based routes.ts.

Would love to hear what folks think — especially the core team’s view on whether this direction fits into the v8 roadmap.

Thanks for reading 🙏

References

• Epic Stack discussion on routing

• @react-router/fs-routes docs
• react-router-auto-routes repo

[brookslybrand]

If there is an overwhelming amount of support to add another official file-based routing option, we may consider it, however I think it's pretty unlikely.

I think the decision doc for routes.ts is worth reviewing here. In summary thought

• Remix v1 we had a file-based routing, some people liked it, some people didn't
• Remix v2 we changed the file-based routing, some people liked it, some people didn't, either way it introduced churn
• React Router v7 we removed file-based routing as the default, but provided @react-router/fs-routes to avoid churn in the migration and encourage people to feel enabled to use some sort of file-based routing (we use it on the remix website because I had no incentive to update all of our route file names since they worked just fine).

Introducing another option in React Router v8 means:

• We are offering yet another option and decision developers feel like they have to make
• We need to provide more documentation explaining why we have different file-based options, when our goal is really to encourage you to choose how you want to organize your routes, and we give you the primitives we need in routes.ts
• We would have to maintain this additional routing convention
• We open the door for even more file-based routing conventions to be introduced

All in all, react-router-auto-routes looks great! It's a convention adapted from an already very popular convention that many developers find useful. You are also highly motivated to continue maintaining it, thinking about new features, and keeping the documentation maintained.

The fact that react-router-auto-routes exists and is used is exactly why we decided to try to get out of the file-based routing game and provide routes.ts as the lower level primitive.