Lexxy 1.0: a modern rich text editor for Rails that replaces Trix

# What Lexxy 1.0 is

Lexxy 1.0 is a new rich text editor released by 37signals and built on Meta's Lexical. It's designed to integrate with Rails' Action Text as a drop-in replacement for Trix and is already running inside Basecamp 5 and other applications.

# Why it was built

Trix has been the Action Text editor since Rails 6 and worked well for years because of its simplicity. But that same simplicity—specifically its flat block document model—made it hard to add certain features. With Trix, documents are a list of blocks where a block is a line of text with labels. That model can't represent nested structures cleanly, so building things like tables or advanced code blocks became awkward.

Contenteditable also played a role. Because Trix relies on contenteditable, behaviors have differed across browsers and sometimes changed with OS updates. 37signals experienced repeated breakage driven by browser or OS changes rather than their own code, which made adding new capabilities slower and more brittle.

# What Lexxy adds

Lexxy targets the specific feature gaps developers and users asked for. Concrete additions mentioned by 37signals include:

• Tables
• Markdown-style shortcuts
• Smart links
• Syntax-highlighted code blocks
• Mentions

Because Lexxy is built on Lexical, it uses a richer document model than Trix's flat blocks. That model makes nested structures and richer node types straightforward, which simplifies implementing features such as tables and code with highlighting.

# How it fits into Rails and Action Text

37signals position Lexxy as easy to swap into Action Text in place of Trix. They wrote the editor with Rails integration in mind and have presented it at Rails World. The project page and announcement state an intention for Lexxy to become the default editor in Rails.

If you want to test it without changing your app, the Lexxy site includes a sandbox demo that lets you try the editor's behaviors before attempting an integration.

# What it means for existing Trix users

Trix will continue to exist, but apps that require tables, advanced code blocks, or other richer behaviors have a clear migration option. Lexxy's different document model and the use of Lexical aim to reduce the cross-browser contenteditable fragility Trix teams encountered.

The practical upgrade path is to evaluate Lexxy in the sandbox, then try swapping it into Action Text where you currently have Trix. Because 37signals built Lexxy to fit Rails, the integration documentation and examples should focus on minimizing changes to server-side handling of rich text.

# Quick next steps for teams

• Try the Lexxy sandbox demo to confirm feature coverage and behavior.
• Audit current Action Text use: which Trix limitations (tables, code blocks, links, mentions) are blocking features you need?
• Test Lexxy in a staging app that mirrors production content to validate rendering, HTML output and any downstream processing (search indexing, sanitization, storage).
• Plan a rollback path: keep Trix available until you've validated content fidelity and browser behavior.

# Bottom line

Lexxy 1.0 aims to give Rails developers a richer, more extensible editor built on Lexical that addresses features Trix struggled to provide and reduces reliance on contenteditable behaviors that vary across browsers. 37signals says it will become Rails' default editor and provides a sandbox for hands-on evaluation.