The compiler should handle common file formats : YAML, MDX, CSV

[laem]

What's happening?

Hi, as per #1187, it appears that if a Nextjs project imports YAML, CSV or MDX files, the compiler will not work.

I was told about Lingo for its promise of translating React code without modifying the original JSX.

But if this mode only works without the aforementioned imports, I'm afraid not a a lot of real world projects will be using Lingo's compiler ?

Or did I miss the possibility of blending the compiler with the CLI modes ?

Exact Reproduction Steps

1. Try the compiler with a Nextjs project that imports a YAML file e.g. for defining theme colors
2. Or try this real world project
3. It fails with an error message described here : https://codeberg.org/cartes/web/pulls/1510

Expected

The compiler should handle common text configuration file formats.

Actual

It fails.

Screenshots/Videos

[maxprilutskiy]

Hi @laem!

1. As of today, Feb 2, 2026, Lingo.dev Compiler is two months out of Beta. While it is actively being deployed to production environments, we do not yet officially recommend it for production use at scale (pls wait a bit!).
2. The core objective of Lingo.dev Compiler is to enable seamless i18n in React apps without the need to manually extract text from JSX into JSON files (e.g., en.json, es.json).
3. Since YAML and CSV formats do not contain JSX, supporting these file types is currently out of scope for the Compiler.
4. MDX sits between the React JSX and non-JSX worlds; while it is not currently supported, it sounds interesting, and we welcome community contributions! 🥇

I hope this clarifies our current community roadmap.

Regarding next steps for your specific project:

6. Localizing YAML, CSV, or MDX: I recommend setting up the Lingo.dev CLI alongside a standard i18n.json configuration. The setup is trivial, and the CLI is proven to handle massive content volumes concurrently with high performance.

Future DX:

7. Hypothetically, if Lingo.dev Compiler were to support YAML and CSV, what would your ideal developer experience look like? I’m curious to understand your perspective on how it could behave. (cc community @The-Best-Codes @AleksandrSl)

[The-Best-Codes]

From what I understand, the compiler is not working with a certain project because it imports MDX, YAML, and CSV files which the compiler can't process? Is that right @laem?

@maxprilutskiy If I'm understanding the issue correctly, I think this is technically a bug. The best solution, IMO, would be to fix the compiler to ignore non-JSX imports (or log a warning that you will need to use the CLI to translate those). But currently, rather than just ignoring the non-JSX files, it's trying to parse them as JSX which is causing an error.

[laem]

Yes @The-Best-Codes that is precisely the problem. If I need to use the CLI for YAML and MDX files, of course I will use it, it's fine, as long as the compiler can handle the rest.

But here, a simple import conf from './conf.yaml where conf is
yaml version: 1.234 name: my-super-app-this-file-does-not-need-to-be-translated
will break the compiler.

In other words, as far as I understand, Lingo's compiler will fail on 99% of real world projects where importing conf files is considered normal ?