Direct reactions have been a unique tool to address the nuclear many-body problem from the experimental side. They are now routinely used in inverse kinematics with radioactive ion beams (RIB). However, weakly bound nuclei have recently raised questions on the applicability of reaction formalisms benchmarked on stable nuclei to the study of single-particle properties and correlations in these unstable systems. The study of the most exotic species produced at low intensity have triggered new technical developments to increase the sensitivity of the setup, with a focused attention to direct reactions such as transfer at low incident energy or knockout at intermediate energies.