Introducing Trio | Part I
Article Summary
Airbnb just open-sourced the architecture powering a significant portion of their Android app. After 2+ years of development, Trio is their answer to Fragment-based pain points.
Airbnb's engineering team built Trio, a Jetpack Compose framework that combines their battle-tested Mavericks state management library with modern Android development. This is Part 1 of a three-part deep dive into how they architected it.
Key Takeaways
- Trio enforces type-safe navigation and communication between screens at compile time
- Each Trio bundles ViewModel, State, and UI into self-contained, testable blocks
- Navigation state lives in the ViewModel, eliminating Fragment Manager sync issues
- Built on Mavericks' proven pattern: UI as a pure function of immutable state
- Solves Fragment scoping problems with explicit dependency creation and injection
Critical Insight
Airbnb created a Compose-first architecture that maintains Mavericks' state management benefits while adding compile-time safety and eliminating Fragment complexity.
