Nnguyenetic
2 min read

Why I picked next-mdx-remote/rsc over @next/mdx

Notes on choosing an MDX engine for a Next.js 16 + next-intl blog with locale-aware routing — and why the file-system option was the wrong fit.

When I started building this blog at /[locale]/blog/... inside an existing Next.js 16 + next-intl site, I had three real options for MDX: @next/mdx, next-mdx-remote/rsc, or rolling my own with react-markdown and a frontmatter parser. The constraint that ruled the day was locale routing.

The collision

@next/mdx lets MDX files act as Next.js pages — drop a page.mdx into src/app/foo/ and it becomes /foo. That's elegant when MDX is your routing primitive. It is not elegant when your route already has a dynamic segment in front of it.

For me, every page lives under [locale]. To make @next/mdx work I'd have to either:

  • duplicate every post per locale folder (defeating the point), or
  • implement a shimmed generateStaticParams that maps file-system MDX into the locale segment — possible, fragile, and at that point you've reinvented the loader anyway.

Why content-as-data wins

The actual content model I want is frontmatter-driven. A post is data with a body. It has a lang, a date, tags. The locale routing should query that data and decide where the post lives, not the other way around.

const PostFrontmatter = z.object({
  title: z.string(),
  description: z.string(),
  date: z.string().regex(/^\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}$/),
  tags: z.array(z.string()).min(1),
  lang: z.enum(routing.locales),
});

With next-mdx-remote/rsc, the loader walks /content/blog/, validates frontmatter against this schema, and returns posts. The [slug] route asks "is there a post with this slug whose lang matches the active locale?" If no, 404. If yes, render via <MDXRemote>. Server-only, zero MDX runtime in the client bundle.

What I gave up

Compile-time errors point to MDX syntax issues by file path but with less inline context than @next/mdx (which fails in your IDE). Worth it.

When @next/mdx would be right

A docs site where MDX is the canonical content type and routing is a 1:1 reflection of the file system. That's not a blog with locales.

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