[gridlockd]

React itself can easily be used as a drop-in much like jQuery, but then you will be using plain Javascript syntax, which is a bit less readable than JSX.

If you're planning to use JSX, you'll need a JSX transpiler and before you know it you're down the Webpack/Babel rabbithole and you get a node_modules folder containing a zillion packages written by a thousand people, of which - statistically speaking - at least a handful will be clinically insane.

But yeah, in principle you can do it (and I have done it).