How I Would Adopt Signal Forms Now That They Are Stable in Angular 22

The status changed, and that changes the question#

For two releases Signal Forms were a developer preview, and the right move was to keep them out of revenue forms. Angular 22 made them stable, and that is not a footnote. A stable API is one you can build a real form on without betting on a signature that might move under you.

v22 also shipped the things that made me hold back: minDate and maxDate validators, debounced async validation (validateHttp(field, { debounce: 400 })), a consistent when option across validators, and getError(kind) with type narrowing. The gaps that used to send a spike back to reactive forms are mostly closed.

So the question is no longer "is it safe to touch." It is "where does Signal Forms earn its place over the reactive forms you already have."

Where each forms path belongs now#

Adopt for new, do not rewrite for cosmetics#

The discipline that applied to the experiment still applies to the stable API, just pointed the other way. Before, the rule was "spike it somewhere safe." Now the rule is "use it for new forms, and leave working reactive forms alone."

A migration of an existing reactive form to Signal Forms should clear the same bar any refactor does: name what gets better (validation, custom controls, type safety in this codebase), not just "it is the new way." If you cannot name the win, the reactive form stays.

# Signal Forms adoption note

Form:
New form, or migration of an existing one:
What Signal Forms makes better here:
Validation cases covered:
Custom controls and Aria:
If migrating, the named win over the reactive version:
Decision: adopt, or keep the reactive form

My default now#

The default flipped with the status. New forms start as Signal Forms, because the API is stable and signal-native and the v22 validators cover the common ground. Existing reactive forms stay until there is a real reason to touch them, and there is no migration campaign, because a stable API does not require one.

That is not enthusiasm replacing discipline. It is the same discipline reading a different fact: the API graduated, so it moved from the spike column to the default-for-new-code column.