React-projects-for-beginners: a shelf of small React apps to read and copy

Eighty five small projects, contributed by people learning React

The React Project for Beginners Repository describes itself as a special place for beginners passionate about learning and contributing to ReactJS open source projects, and the count in the readme is 85 or more projects. The code is JavaScript, the licence is MIT, and the topics attached to the repository are honest about the intent: beginner, beginner friendly, mini project, react for beginners, learning, contribution, contributions welcome, hacktoberfest and hacktoberfest accepted.

It is a repository of small applications, not a library. The directory listing at the top level shows the shape of the collection immediately, with one folder per project: Asteroid_Dodger, BMI-Calculator, Bank-KYC-Form, Blinkit clone, Blob_Generator, Blood_Donation_Website, Book_Review_Platform, Browser-Tab-Manager, Camping Trip Planner, Checkers, Christmas Diorama, Click_Combo, Code-Mate, Code-Stats-Tracker, Color-Palette-Generator, CompAi, Contact-manager, CosmicVista - Space, Countdown-To-Birthday, Covid-19_Tracker, Credit-Card-Validator, CryptoPrice-Checker, Currency-Converter, DaZzyFoodApp, Daily-Workout-Randomizer, Dice-App, Disney-Plus-Hotstar-Clone, E-commerce_Website, Emoji-Search-App, Farming-landing, Flashlight-Toggle-App, Food_Recipe, Frequency-Generator, Fruit-Matcher-Game, Fun-Fact Generator, GIF Generator, Gemini-powered-flashcards, Google-NotebookLM-Clone, Google-clone, Gradient-Generator, GreenLeaf-Houseplant store, Guess-the-number-react-app-main, HEX-RGB Converter, HabitArena, Hacker-Typer, Home_Automation_Control, InterestRate-Calculator, JobBoard and KaStore-App, among others.

For a learner, that list is the useful part. The projects are small enough to read in one sitting and varied enough to show how the same handful of React patterns get used for a calculator, a job board, a banking form, an e-commerce site and a plant store.

The review rules: a project that does not run is invalid

Three notes sit at the top of the readme, and they are the acceptance criteria for a contribution.

The first is the strictest. Please check your project carefully, it should be error free. Your project will be reviewed. If the reviewer found any error, your request will be marked as INVALID.

That is an unusual amount of weight for a beginner repository, and it is worth understanding why. The repository's value depends on the projects running, because a project that does not start teaches a beginner the wrong lesson, and a reviewer running eighty five projects is doing real work. The trade-off is that a first contribution has a real chance of being rejected, so the effort has to go into running the app first rather than into the styling.

The second note is administrative and easy to miss: do not forget to list your project in the projects.js file in the root folder of the repo, and you can also add the demo link of your project if you have one. The projects.js file is the catalogue, and a project that is not registered there is invisible to a reader browsing the repository.

The third note points at the repository size management guidelines, which are the subject of their own section in the readme and deserve a section of their own here, because they are the most transferable part of the whole document.

The contribution loop, and the branch you are asked to target

The process of contribution is the standard GitHub flow with a few specifics that are worth reading twice.

You fork the repository to your own account, then clone the fork to your local machine.

git clone https://github.com/ianshulx/React-projects-for-beginners

You create a new branch, and the command is given with a concrete name.

git checkout -b my-new-branch

You add and commit, and the reminder attached to the commit step is that the message should include the detail needed to understand the change.

git add.
git commit -m "Relevant message"

You push to your fork, and then you open a pull request.

git push origin my-new-branch

The last step has the detail that matters. The pull request is raised to the repository's dev branch, not to main, and the reminder asks that the pull request title explains the major topic of the request.

That is a small thing, but it is the kind of small thing that makes a first contribution fail. The default branch of the repository is recorded as main-616, a name that suggests the project has been through several branch schemes, so a contributor who guesses main and opens the pull request against it is sending work to the wrong place.

The size and performance guidelines are the real content

The repository size management guidelines run to nine sections, and they are the most useful part of the readme for anyone who will ever put a project in a shared repository.

The first rule is the limit that everything else follows from: each individual project folder should not exceed 15 MB, and a project that needs more space because of extra assets or data should be refactored or should store those files elsewhere, such as cloud storage or GitHub Pages. The second asks for clearly labelled folders under the root with a simple structure. The third forbids large binary files such as videos, high resolution images and compiled executables, and points at Git LFS for anything over 100 MB.

The fourth asks for minimal external libraries and a .gitignore covering node_modules and build output. The fifth asks for regular cleanup of logs, temporary files, and outdated or unused projects. The sixth is about compression: tools such as TinyPNG, ImageOptim and Squoosh for images, WebP for web images, a resolution of 72 DPI as sufficient for most React projects, SVG wherever possible, and lossless compression for other assets like PDFs and audio.

The seventh is a performance section that is unusual in a beginner repository. It asks for bundling and minification with tools such as Webpack or Vite, and for tree shaking, with a concrete example: prefer import { Button } from 'library' instead of import * as Library from 'library'.

The eighth is about commit history: keep it clean, avoid frequent commits of unnecessary files, use meaningful and concise messages, and split a project into its own repository if it grows too large. The ninth restates the size limits for contributors and says large contributions should be discussed through an issue or a pull request first.

Read as a whole, this is a repository size policy that happens to be attached to a beginner project list, and it is a better piece of advice than most of the code in the repository.

What the catalogue actually contains

The directory names are a decent proxy for the kinds of project people build when they are learning React, and they fall into recognisable groups.

There are clones of well known products: Blinkit clone, Disney-Plus-Hotstar-Clone, Google-clone, Google-NotebookLM-Clone, and a Gemini-powered-flashcards project. There are small utility tools: BMI-Calculator, Currency-Converter, CryptoPrice-Checker, Credit-Card-Validator, InterestRate-Calculator, Color-Palette-Generator, Gradient-Generator, HEX-RGB Converter, GIF Generator, Blob_Generator, Fun-Fact Generator, Flashlight-Toggle-App, Emoji-Search-App and Code-Stats-Tracker.

There are games: Asteroid_Dodger, Checkers, Dice-App, Click_Combo, Fruit-Matcher-Game, Hacker-Typer and the Guess-the-number React app. And there are small applications with a data model behind them: JobBoard, Book_Review_Platform, Contact-manager, E-commerce_Website, Food_Recipe, Home_Automation_Control, Blood_Donation_Website, Covid-19_Tracker, Browser-Tab-Manager, Camping Trip Planner and the GreenLeaf houseplant store.

Two observations follow. The first is that the collection tracks what beginners find interesting rather than what exercises a particular part of React, which is why there are four clones and only one thing that looks like a state management exercise. The second is that the range of naming is wide, from Bank-KYC-Form to CosmicVista - Space, and the guidelines explicitly ask for clearly labelled folders in a simple structure, which is a hint that this is a goal rather than a current state.

Where this repository is the wrong tool

Four limits, and the first is the most important for a reader who arrives expecting a library.

Nothing here is a dependency. There is no package to install, no API to call and no shared architecture. Each folder is a self-contained application by a different author, in a different state of completion, with a different dependency set. Treating the repository as a source of reusable React components is a category error, and treating it as a set of reference implementations is the correct use.

The second is the consistency. With no shared tooling, there is no consistent React version, no consistent build setup, and no indication in the listing of which projects have tests or a linter. The readme asks contributors to keep dependencies light, which reduces the risk of one project dragging in an obsolete package, but it does not make the code uniformly modern. A project from the 2023 Hacktoberfest season is two years older than one from 2025, and the topics show all three seasons represented.

The third is the review bottleneck. Every project is reviewed by a human and a project with any error is marked invalid. That protects the collection and it also means the throughput depends on the maintainers, who are volunteers running a Hacktoberfest event, so a contribution in November is likely to be reviewed in November and a contribution in July is likely to wait.

The fourth is the shared repository itself. Eighty five projects in one repository is the reason for the 15 MB limit, the ban on binaries, the compression rules and the advice to split a project into its own repository. A collection structured this way cannot hold a project with real assets, and the guidelines are the documentation of that constraint rather than a set of optional preferences.

Licence, branches and where the project stands

The repository is licensed under the MIT License, stated in the readme with a do's and don'ts summary, and a LICENSE file is in the top level listing. The summary covers using the code in commercial applications, and this is not legal advice, but a permissive licence that explicitly contemplates commercial use is the right one for a collection of contributed examples.

The version history is thin. The only release listed is React Projects for Beginners v1.0.0, published on 2024-11-01, and the last push was on 2026-09-26. The repository is not archived.

The branch situation deserves a note. The default branch is recorded as main-616, and the contribution instructions say to open pull requests against a dev branch. A repository with a main branch, a dev branch and a default branch named after a pull request number is a repository whose conventions have drifted over several Hacktoberfest seasons, and the topics list hacktoberfest2023, hacktoberfest2024 and hacktoberfest2025, which fits that history.

The remaining top level entries tell you about the tooling. There is a .tolgee directory, which is conventionally a translation workflow configuration, and a .lh directory, plus a Contribution-Rules.md file alongside CONTRIBUTING.md, a .gitignore, and a .github directory for the templates and workflows. The .DS_Store in the listing is a small artefact of a macOS contributor, which is the sort of detail that this repository is honest enough to leave in place.

Editorial conclusion

React-projects-for-beginners is worth browsing if you are learning React and want small, complete examples rather than a tutorial series, and it is a well trodden path to a first open source contribution during Hacktoberfest. It is the wrong place to look for a library, a framework or production code, since the projects are individual mini applications with no shared architecture, only size and dependency guidance. Before contributing, read the review notes, because a project that does not run is marked invalid, and check the size rules before you add assets, because the shared repository is what forces them.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. ianshulx/React-projects-for-beginners on GitHub
2. License: MIT
3. Project website
4. README
5. Releases