Hermes + Node API: A Match Made in Heaven

Khalef Hosany

Principal Engineering Manager at Microsoft

I am an engineering manager at Microsoft and my team works on React Native for desktop and the integration of React Native into Microsoft Office. We also contribute to upstream React Native, help drive open-source releases and participate in several React Native related working groups.

Vladimir Morozov

Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft

Hermes + Node API: A Match Made in Heaven

The Node API has become the industry standard for building native add-ons in Node.js. It’s engine-agnostic and ABI-stable, which makes it versatile enough for runtimes like Deno and Bun; and now, React Native. Vladimir Morozov and Khalef Hosany from Microsoft share how they’ve integrated Hermes with Node API, and what this means for the future of React Native.

▪ What Node API is, why ABI stability matters, and how it enables long-term module compatibility.

▪ How React Native Windows adopted Node API to support multiple engines and languages.

▪ A fork of Hermes reimplementing JSI on top of Node API, and the path to upstreaming this work.

▪ Demos showing Node API modules compiled once and running across different environments, including Hermes.

▪ What this unlocks: universal native modules, cross-runtime portability, and using the latest Hermes with older React Native versions.

This talk highlights how the combination of Hermes and Node API creates a more stable, extensible, and future-proof foundation for React Native development.