Introduction
What is ZNTC?
Section titled “What is ZNTC?”ZNTC stands for Zig Native Transpiler & Compiler. It is a native-speed transpile and bundling toolchain for JavaScript, TypeScript, and Flow, aiming for production-level quality on par with SWC and oxc.
Key Features
Section titled “Key Features”- TypeScript/JSX transpile — Type stripping, enum conversion, decorators, JSX (classic/automatic). Transpile overview · Native Transforms
- Bundling — Tree-shaking, code splitting, preserve-modules. Bundling overview · Tree-shaking · manualChunks
- React Native — Metro-compatible bundling, Flow stripping, Hermes bytecode compatibility. React Native guide · Expo
- Plugins — Rollup/Vite-compatible plugin system (C NAPI, in-process). Plugins guide · Vite adapter
- Dev Server — HMR, proxy, static file serving, SSE. Dev Server guide
- WASM — Transpile and bundle directly in the browser / Edge / WASI. Installation guide — WASM
1st-party transforms, no Babel
Section titled “1st-party transforms, no Babel”Transformations that other bundlers ship as separate Babel plugins or presets are built into ZNTC. A single option enables each one — no @babel/core dependency required.
- styled-components —
compiler.styledComponents(replacesbabel-plugin-styled-components) - emotion —
compiler.emotion(replaces@emotion/babel-plugin) - Reanimated worklets — automatic
"worklet"directive handling (replacesreact-native-worklets/plugin; auto-on for React Native) - Flow — type annotations handled in the parser (replaces
@babel/preset-flow; auto-on for React Native)
See the Native Transforms guide for full usage.
Comparison with esbuild
Section titled “Comparison with esbuild”ZNTC is compatible with esbuild’s CLI options and behavior while providing a Rollup/Rolldown-style plugin system.
| Feature | ZNTC | esbuild |
|---|---|---|
| Language | Zig | Go |
| TypeScript | O | O |
| Flow | O | X |
| React Native | O | X |
| preserve-modules | O | X |
| Plugin style | Rollup-compatible | esbuild-native |
| WASM | O | O |