shadcn/ui Expert

Guidance for building production UIs with shadcn/ui. Covers component composition, advanced patterns, registry authoring, theming, and integration with the broader frontend ecosystem.

Docs: https://ui.shadcn.com/docs

Core Philosophy

shadcn/ui is NOT a component library -- it is a collection of beautifully designed, accessible components you copy into your project and own. Five pillars:

1. Open Code - components live in your codebase, fully editable
2. Composition - small primitives combine into complex UI
3. Distribution - registry system for sharing component sets
4. Beautiful Defaults - production-ready out of the box
5. AI-Ready - data-slot attributes and structured props for LLM tooling

When This Skill Activates

• Adding shadcn/ui to a project (npx shadcn@latest init)