Write your app in English. It ships in every language.

You write a component the way you always have:

<p>Welcome back, {user.name}! You have unread messages.</p>

You hit save. Two seconds later the Spanish tab you have open hot-reloads in Spanish - French and Japanese are done too, and the string is type-checked.

There's no key to invent, no JSON to edit, nothing to wrap. In mode: 'auto' the compiler finds your copy at build time; the AI translates it on your machine, with your key, and the result lands in your repo as reviewable JSON. If you'd rather mark strings explicitly, <T> is the default mode and always works.

Get started

# Next.js
pnpm add @autotranslate/next && pnpm add -D @autotranslate/cli

# Vite
pnpm add @autotranslate/react && pnpm add -D @autotranslate/vite @autotranslate/cli

npx autotranslate init

init detects your framework and wires everything. Set your provider key, pnpm dev, write copy.

Five-minute walkthrough: Quick start.

The parts you'd otherwise build yourself

Builds are gated. Production builds fail with the exact list ('Check out' at components/Cart.tsx:41) when a translation is missing. The model is never called at build time, so CI needs no API key.
PRs are reviewable. autotranslate parity --format github posts a table of every changed translation and fails on missing locales or broken ICU.
Your editor knows. The TypeScript plugin shows the translation inline next to each t('...') call.
Runtime is boring. Catalogs bundle through static imports - code-split per locale, edge-safe, no filesystem, no runtime AI. Ever.

Why not the alternatives?

Library	Code-as-source	AI translation	Self-hosted	Framework-pluggable
`react-i18next`	❌	❌	✅	✅
`next-intl`	❌	❌	✅	Next.js only
`lingui`	✅	❌	✅	✅
`gt-next` / `gt-react`	✅	✅	❌	Next.js + React
`autotranslate`	✅	✅	✅	✅ + edge runtimes

Traditional i18n hands you a second codebase of keys and catalogs that drifts from the first. Cloud AI i18n fixes the authoring but takes your copy to a vendor. autotranslate does neither - the reasoning is in Philosophy.

Documentation

Quick start - translated app in five minutes
Concepts - the mental model on one page
Frameworks - Next.js, Vite, Remix
Guides - <T>, useT, standalone t(), plurals, formatters, providers, type-safety
Cookbook - locale switcher, forms, testing, CI/CD, overrides, debugging
Migrating - from react-i18next, next-intl, lingui, gt-next
Reference - configuration, CLI, public API

Examples

pnpm --filter @autotranslate/example-next-app dev    # Next.js App Router + RSC
pnpm --filter @autotranslate/example-vite-react dev  # Vite + React SPA

Both ship with committed catalogs, so they run without an API key.

Status

1.0.0-beta - install with the beta dist-tag. GA after a real-world soak.

Phase	Versions	What it means
Beta	`1.0.0-beta.x`	Public API frozen modulo bug fixes; on-disk format is additive-only.
1.0	`1.0.0`	First stable release. Semver from here on.
Post-1.0	`1.x.y+`	Backwards-compatible features and fixes per semver.

The bar for a breaking change before GA: real production pain the frozen API can't accommodate. Bug reports, design feedback, and PRs welcome.

Contributing

pnpm install && pnpm dev
pnpm test && pnpm typecheck && pnpm lint

Internals in ARCHITECTURE.md, workflow in .github/CONTRIBUTING.md, releases in .github/RELEASING.md.

Autotranslate

README