Triplex Goes Open Source and Moves to Poimandres

Triplex has moved into the Poimandres Collective and is now completely open source! You can find the new repository location over here github.com/pmndrs/triplex along with all previously created issues and history.

Keep reading for the history of building Triplex and what led to this moment.

Triplex started out as an experiment late 2022 when I was building games with React Three Fiber. I found it super frustrating to flesh out and iterate on components. Making changes in code felt insane! Surely there must exist a better way, right? Well... no! The gold standard was editing your code, at best manually wiring up props to a control panel.

So the experiment ended with a proof-of-concept editor where you could transform components in 3d space and save them back to code. It felt like a real game changer. From there I was hooked, and I started building out the core features in my spare time before and after work that would eventually become Triplex.

Here's a timeline of the major changes in Triplex:

• Jun 2023: Released Triplex Standalone, edit your components visually and save back to code
• Sep 2023: Editing child elements through the elements panel
• Oct 2023: Internal re-write to prevent losing unsaved changes when refreshing and switching tabs
• Mar 2024: Selection system re-write to stop modifying the Three.js scene
• May 2024: Removed the entire config being required to get started, now install Triplex and open a component
• Jan 2025: Added support for React DOM elements and components, unblocking using Triplex for 2D and 2D + 3D components
• Mar 2025: Released Triplex for VS Code, edit your components visually right inside VS Code
• Aug 2025: Update the selection system to use AST paths for identification instead of line and column number, selections are now way more robust across code changes
• Oct 2025: Triplex goes open source and moves to Poimandres

3 years, 1,300 commits, and 1 baby later and now we're here. I've always had intentions to build something (a business?) around Triplex, "build it and they'll come", but unfortunately never found product market fit nor promise market fit. Not enough interest, and not enough signals to know anyone would actually pay for it. So instead I've now started a new job at Paper and because of that have less time to dedicate to Triplex.

I want to see Triplex thrive and grow, and building completely in the open under Poimandres is the best place for that to happen. It's more like going home after all this time because that's where it started out from, after all. And who knows? Maybe something will show up in the future.

I need your help! Where we go is going to be up to you and the community! What features do you want to see? What bugs need fixing? What should the roadmap look like? All of that is open for discussion and contribution, and I'd absolutely love to see pull requests raised against Triplex and new features land from the community. I can help guide you, review your code, and even jump on a call to help you get started.

Here's some ideas of where we could go next:

• Plugins and deeper integrations with pmndrs libraries (XR, Koota, Drei, ...)
• Support non-React frameworks (Vue, Svelte, ...?)
• Lean into more AI features (I wrote a MVP for this but it's terrible and behind a feature gate)
• Build a Cloud app (imagine working at app.triplex.dev)
• New productivity features, make it easier for non-coders to jump in, shareable deployments
• Support other React libraries (Play Canvas React...?)
• React Server Components / Next.js support

There's so much opportunity here beyond just React and React Three Fiber, and I hope to see what that looks like with you for the years to come. Until next time.

mike douges