Angular v21 released this week, with a slew of new and experimental offerings, including the launch of Signal Forms and the release of the new Angular MCP Server.
Signal Forms is an experimental library that uses Signals to create scalable, composable and reactive forms, according to Angular team members Jens Kuehlers and Mark Thompson. Signals is a reactive primitive used for state management. It allow you to manage form state by building on the reactive foundations of signals.
“With Signal Forms, the Form model is defined by a signal that …
Angular v21 released this week, with a slew of new and experimental offerings, including the launch of Signal Forms and the release of the new Angular MCP Server.
Signal Forms is an experimental library that uses Signals to create scalable, composable and reactive forms, according to Angular team members Jens Kuehlers and Mark Thompson. Signals is a reactive primitive used for state management. It allow you to manage form state by building on the reactive foundations of signals.
“With Signal Forms, the Form model is defined by a signal that automatically syncs with the form fields bound to it, allowing for an ergonomic developer experience with full type-safety for accessing form fields,” Kuehlers and Thompson explained. “Powerful and centralized schema-based validation logic is built in.”
The Signal Forms API is still experimental and will be iterating based on developer feedback.
This release also includes the Angular MCP Server as well, which was introduced in version 20.2 but is now stable. It adds seven stable and experimental tools so that LLMs can use new Angular features, the team wrote.
The MCP Server incorporates best practices so that your favorite AI tool can write better Angular. It also includes a search documentation tool that lets you query Angular’s documentation. The MCP Server incorporates a migration tool that can analyze code and provide a plan to migrate your application to OnPush and boneless change detection. It also offers an experimental tool to perform code migrations using existing schematics, the team wrote.
Developers can also use the AI Tutor tool, which launches an interactive AI tutor that will help developers learn Angular and provide feedback on best practices.
“With the MCP server you are able to bridge the knowledge cutoff issue — your LLM was trained with Angular knowledge as of a specific date, but using the MCP server, it can learn to use even brand new features such as Signal Forms and Angular Aria — you just need to ask your agent to find examples and use them,” the team wrote.
In support of accessibility, Angular also released Angular Aria in Developer Preview. It, too, is Signals-based. It provides headless components built with accessibility as a priority.
There’s a set of eight UI patterns encompassing 13 components that are completely unstyled and can be customized with your own styles, the team wrote. The eight patterns are:
- Accordion
- Combobox
- Grid
- Listbox
- Menu
- Tabs
- Toolbar
- Tree
Also new: The Angular CLI integrates Vitest as the new default test runner, with Vitest support being production-ready, the team said. While Vitest is the new default test runner for new projects, Karma and Jasmine are still fully supported by the Angular team, so developers don’t have to migrate … yet. They have, however, decided to deprecate the experimental support for Web Test Runner and Zest, which will be removed completely in version 22.
Finally, the new Angular applications no longer include zone.js by default. Zone.js is a library that patches browser APIs to keep track of changes in applications, the team explained
“This enabled the ‘magical’ experience where templates automatically change as the user performs actions in your application, however zone.js has performance drawbacks, especially for high-complexity applications,” they wrote. “Through our experience with applications in Google we became increasingly more confident that new Angular applications work best without zone.js.”
Svelte Adds MCP Server
Svelte made its MCP server available this month, with its own section of the docs site and GitHub repo.
“It should replace the copy/pasting of the Svelte docs that’s often required to get LLMs to write valid Svelte 5 code and can provide suggestions on the generated code with static analysis,” wrote designer Dani Sandoval on the Svelte blog.
Sandoval’s blog post also outlines additional changes in this month’s release.
Postman Acquires Tool for Automating Generation of SDKs
API company Postman announced its acquisition of liblab late last week. Liblab is tool that lets developers automate the generation of Software Development Kits (SDKs).
“With this acquisition, we are expanding our platform to cover the entire API lifecycle and accelerating our customers’ ability to build AI-ready, agent-enabled APIs,” wrote Abhinav Asthana, the company’s co-founder and CEO.
Liblab brings to Postman:
- An SDK Code Generator that can auto-generate custom SDKs for APIs;
- An MCP Generator that seamlessly integrates with API and AI tooling; and
- A novel API and SDK documentation that can sync with every API change.
“Their ‘SDKs-as-a-service’ model enables developers to generate high-quality, customizable SDKs in seconds, with code that mirrors the look and feel of expert-written libraries in every major language,” Asthana wrote. “These products make API consumption effortless and allow developers to build faster, a vision that Postman shares.”
Their technology will be integrated into Postman’s platform.
Postman plans to invest in liblab’s core SDK generation engine and work with their team to create a single, seamless workflow from API design to API consumption, he added.
Avalonia Brings .NET MAUI to Linux, Browser
The cross-platform development framework .NET MAUI is coming to Linux and the browser, according to Avalonia, which provides the backend for .NET MAUI.
This is a real MAUI application running on WebAssembly, rendered through Avalonia, which is an open source, cross-platform UI framework for .NET developers. Avalonia CEO Mike James writes that it’s “an early build with rough edges,” but it proves that MAUI can now run on every major desktop OS and in the browser.
Avalonia’s MAUI backend keeps the MAUI codebase but replaces the rendering layer with Avalonia.
“The goal is straightforward: Take your existing MAUI applications and extend them to additional platforms, while enhancing desktop performance along the way,” James wrote.
Avalonia already runs on embedded Linux devices such as Raspberry Pi, but now .NET MAUI leverages that backend to run as first-class desktop apps on distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian and Fedora.
Avalonia also demoed a MAUI application that runs on WebAssembly in the browser and is rendered by Avalonia without native dependencies on the client.
James explained why Avalonia is investing in MAUI.
“The honest answer is that we care about .NET client developers first, and about which on ramp they use second. Many teams have already chosen MAUI, which they like and want more from. If we can provide them with Linux and browser support, along with improved desktop performance, without requiring a rewrite, that aligns with our mission to delight developers and solve complex problems.”
For MAUI developers, he wrote that Avalonia provides:
• Hardware accelerated rendering on every platform; • A consistent layout and styling system; • Smooth animations at high refresh rates; • Custom rendering and visual effects capabilities; • Broad platform coverage; and • A fully supported platform that is receiving significant investment.
“By building MAUI on top of Avalonia, you get a predictable, drawn UI foundation and an expanded set of platforms, without having to throw away your existing codebase,” James wrote. “You do not need to abandon MAUI to get Linux and the web. You can bring MAUI with you, while also improving the experience on Windows and macOS.”
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