RFC: Granular Subscription State

[palacharlanarendra]

This RFC proposes a way to reduce unnecessary re-renders by allowing components to subscribe only to the specific parts of state they actually use. The idea is to track property access within a selector and re-render only the components that depend on the changed value, rather than re-rendering entire subtrees.

The goal is to improve performance and developer experience in large React applications without changing existing mental models or requiring heavy memoization. The proposal outlines how this could work using a dependency map and a useGranular hook that integrates with useSyncExternalStore.

I’m opening this to start a discussion on whether this direction aligns with React’s long-term performance goals, and whether it makes sense as an experimental API or an external package first. Feedback on potential pitfalls, API shape, or integration considerations would be appreciated.

File added:

text/0000-granular-subscriptions.md

Looking forward to thoughts and discussion.

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[slorber]

This has been discussed in other RFCs and issues already, see:

• RFC: Context selectors #119
• Skeleton for store facebook/react#33215
• https://react.dev/blog/2025/04/23/react-labs-view-transitions-activity-and-more#concurrent-stores