NetonA modern Kotlin/Native web framework

The components a production service actually needs — routing, data access, caching, security, scheduled jobs, domain events — and nothing more. Compiled to a native binary: no JVM, no reflection, millisecond startup.

Quick start

main.kt

Neton.run(args) {

    http {
        port = 8080
    }

    routing {
        get("/") {
            "Hello Neton!"
        }
    }
}

Native performance

Compiles to a native binary. Around 3 ms startup and 20 MB resident memory, with no JVM overhead — suitable for edge and resource-constrained deployments.

Convention over configuration

Parameter binding is inferred from the signature (path / query / body), so roughly 90% of handlers need no annotations. Routes are grouped by directory convention.

Security built in

A two-layer Authenticator + Guard architecture with JWT and mock authenticators included (sessions are yours to implement) and annotation-driven authorization.

Only what a service needs

Only the components almost every service uses — web, validation, database, cache, Redis, security, scheduling, domain events. Service discovery and config servers are left to Kubernetes. Fewer moving parts, wired at compile time: easier to maintain, faster, a better fit for microservices. See “What Neton gives you”.

Structured logging

One Logger API with JSON output, built-in traceId / spanId propagation and automatic redaction, ready for log collection pipelines.

Compile-time codegen

Controller routes, parameter binding and the Config SPI are all generated by KSP at compile time. No reflection, no runtime scanning.

The Kotlin/Native server era starts here

The engineering productivity of a mature framework, with the startup time and resource density of a native executable. Read the Neton 1.0 public beta announcement.

Version

This documentation covers Neton 1.0.0 (Kotlin 2.4.0 / KSP 2.3.10), currently in public beta. The final release date is not yet fixed.

Where the documentation and the code disagree, the compilable examples under neton/examples/ and the framework sources are authoritative. Please open an issue so the docs can be corrected.