Building with Qwik v2

Publier’s interactive surface is built on Qwik v2. Three concepts explain why a Publier site feels instant: component$, signals, and resumability.

component$ and the dollar sign

In Qwik, every UI component is declared with component$(). The $ suffix is not decoration — it marks the function as a lazy-loadable boundary. Qwik serializes the application state on the server and resumes execution in the browser only where interaction happens.

import { component$, useSignal } from '@qwik.dev/core';

export const Counter = component$(() => {
  const count = useSignal(0);

  return (
    <button onClick$={() => count.value++}>
      Clicks: {count.value}
    </button>
  );
});

The onClick$ handler isn’t downloaded until the button is clicked. On a read-heavy documentation site, most JavaScript never executes at all.

Signals

Qwik uses signals for reactive state. useSignal() holds a single value; useStore() holds a reactive object. Unlike a virtual DOM, Qwik tracks signal subscriptions and updates only the DOM nodes that actually changed.

const isOpen = useSignal(false);
const sidebar = useStore({ width: 280, pinned: true });

Mutating sidebar.pinned = false re-renders only the components that read sidebar.pinned.

Resumability

Traditional SSR frameworks hydrate: they re-run all component code in the browser to attach event listeners. On a large docs site, hydration can block interactivity for seconds.

Qwik serializes the listener map and component state into the HTML. The browser picks up where the server left off — no re-execution. For a Publier site, that means the AI assistant and any custom Qwik widgets are interactive the moment the page is visible, regardless of bundle size.

Last updated 2026-04-30