Component API Design

---
name: Component API Design
description: Design clean, composable React/Vue component APIs with accessibility built in.
---

# Component API Design

Use this skill to design the public API of a UI component before writing
implementation. A good API is learnable, hard to misuse, and composable.

## Principles

1. **Make the common case effortless, the complex case possible.**
2. **Prefer composition over configuration** — slots beat boolean explosions.
3. **The prop name is documentation** — it should read aloud as English.
4. **Accessibility is not a prop** — it is the default behavior.

## Step 1: Name the responsibilities

List every job the component does. If it does more than one thing that could vary
independently, split it. A `Menu` that also manages a button is two components:
`Menu` and `MenuTrigger`.

## Step 2: Choose the composition model
… install to load the full skill