One pattern kept repeating itself while working on large React applications:

frontend ecosystems slowly become fragmented.

At first, everything feels manageable.

You install:

one package for components

another for hooks

another for utilities

another for icons

another for design tokens/themes

Individually, these libraries are often excellent.

But as applications and teams scale, the operational cost quietly compounds.

Over time I started noticing recurring problems:

inconsistent APIs across packages

duplicated abstractions

bundle size growth

conflicting dependency upgrades

fragmented documentation

different engineering philosophies fighting each other

increasing cognitive overhead for teams

The bigger the frontend codebase became, the more time teams spent stitching ecosystems together instead of building actual product experiences.

The hidden frontend tax

What makes this problem interesting is that the pain usually appears gradually.

A project starts simple.

Then:

another utility gets…