Rome Tools

Rome was an ambitious unified JavaScript toolchain project aiming to replace Babel, ESLint, Prettier, and more with a single fast tool. The project went inactive in 2023 and was forked by the community as Biome. This page documents Rome's history and provides a clear migration path.

What is Rome?

Rome was an open-source JavaScript toolchain project started by Sebastian McKenzie, the creator of Babel. Its goal was extraordinarily ambitious: build a single unified tool to replace the entire JavaScript ecosystem's fragmented toolchain — compiler, bundler, linter, formatter, type checker, and test runner — with zero external dependencies.

Rome successfully shipped a linter and formatter — initially written in TypeScript, then rewritten in Rust for dramatic performance gains. The Rust rewrite produced excellent results, but Rome Tools Inc., the company formed to commercialize the project, went quiet in mid-2023. Maintenance stopped, issues went unanswered, and the community had no path to contribute.

The Fork: How Rome Became Biome

In August 2023, a group of Rome contributors — unable to get write access to the dormant Rome repository — forked the Rust codebase and published it under a new name: Biome. The new project lives at biomejs.dev and on GitHub at github.com/biomejs/biome.

Biome v1.0 shipped immediately after the fork and has continued to ship frequent releases. The npm package moved from rome to @biomejs/biome. The config file moved from rome.json to biome.json.

Project History Timeline

# Rome project timeline
# 2020 — Sebastian McKenzie (Babel creator) announces Rome
#         Goal: unify all JS tooling (compiler, bundler, linter, formatter, test runner)
#         Built in TypeScript initially
#
# 2021 — Rome Tools Inc. formed, seed funding raised
#         Rome v1 (TypeScript) released — formatter and linter only
#
# 2022 — Rome rewrites its core in Rust
#         Performance improves dramatically
#         rome.json config file introduced
#
# 2023 Q3 — Rome Tools Inc. goes quiet, maintenance stalls
#            Community forks the Rust codebase
#
# 2023 Aug — Fork renamed "Biome", new GitHub org: biomejs
#            First Biome release (v1.0) ships under new leadership
#
# Today  — Rome is unmaintained; Biome is the active successor
#           All Rome users should migrate to Biome

Migrating from Rome to Biome

Migration is simple. Uninstall the old rome package, install @biomejs/biome, and replace rome.json with a new biome.json. The configuration structure is nearly identical.

# Rome (the old tool) is no longer maintained.
# If you have @romefrontend/rome or rome installed, uninstall it:
npm remove rome @romefrontend/rome

# Remove Rome config files if present
rm rome.json

# Install Biome — the active successor
npm add -D @biomejs/biome

# Initialize Biome's config
npx @biomejs/biome init

# Run check (lint + format)
npx @biomejs/biome check --write .

Biome Configuration (biome.json)

If you had a rome.json, here is what the equivalent biome.json looks like. The schema is fully typed and documented at biomejs.dev/reference/configuration.

// biome.json — Biome's single config file (replaces rome.json)
{
  "$schema": "https://biomejs.dev/schemas/1.6.0/schema.json",
  "organizeImports": {
    "enabled": true
  },
  "linter": {
    "enabled": true,
    "rules": {
      "recommended": true
    }
  },
  "formatter": {
    "enabled": true,
    "indentStyle": "space",
    "indentWidth": 2,
    "lineWidth": 80
  }
}

Rome vs Biome at a Glance

Should I Use Rome Today?