Nothing to see here ...

Quite so. This package allows you to bring Reacts high-level component abstraction to Node, or wherever you need it. Why not manage your REST endpoints like routes on the client, users as components with mount/unmount lifecycles, self-contained separation of concern and clean side-effects. Suspense for requests, etc.

You can try a small demo here: https://codesandbox.io/s/react-nil-mvpry

How does it work?

import React, { useState, useEffect } from "react"
import { render } from "react-nil"

function Foo() {
  const [active, set] = useState(false)
  useEffect(() => void setInterval(() => set((a) => !a), 1000), [])
  console.log(active)

  // This is a logical component without a view, it renders nothing,
  // but it has a real lifecycle and is managed by React regardless.
  return null
}

render(<Foo />)