I do this with React all the time as well, though via ClojureScript and Re-frame[1], in which nodes are represented as plain Clojure data structures.
E.g., send an article from the server, formatted in EDN/Hiccup[2][3]. Insert it into a component in the frontend, and it's converted to VDOM nodes. No further logic or conversion required.
I just noticed that Reframe README is very amusing and wickedly hilarious in some parts. It is very refreshing to read compared to other bland/formal/techinical READMEs ... Maybe in future I will try and see if using Reframe itself is joyful like its Readme ...
Once you get into it, it's very good. It wrinkled my brain at first though. It does include a bit more ceremony than plain Reagent, which means the app should be sufficiently advanced for the benefits to outweigh the overhead.
My rule of thumb is to start with Reagent, and as soon as I notice the desire to wrap and abstract away plain atom swaps, I switch over to re-frame.
Re-frame is largely an abstraction over atom swaps, and guaranteed to be better than the half-baked, 10% coverage of the Re-frame functionality that I would end up with if I did it myself.
Migrating from Reagent to Re-frame doesn't have to be done in one huge refactoring. It can be done by introducing re-frame into your app function by function.
E.g., send an article from the server, formatted in EDN/Hiccup[2][3]. Insert it into a component in the frontend, and it's converted to VDOM nodes. No further logic or conversion required.
[1]: https://github.com/Day8/re-frame
[2]: https://github.com/edn-format/edn
[3]: https://github.com/weavejester/hiccup/wiki/Syntax