new-component

Workflow

1. Registry check first. Before writing any component by hand, check whether shadcn has it: pnpm shadcn view <name> for a known item, or pnpm shadcn search (for example pnpm shadcn search dialog) to look. A registry counterpart means a button, dialog, tabs, popover, select, table and the like.
2. If the registry has it, run pnpm shadcn add <name>. The file lands flat in app/components/ui/<name>.tsx and is vendored: do not edit it (see frontend/.claude/rules/shadcn-ui.md). Then compose the added component in a GAIA component or page rather than hand-writing a replacement; add app/components/ui/tests/<name>.stories.tsx for the new ui file. Stop here unless the user still needs a GAIA component around it.
3. Only when the registry has no counterpart, or the request is app logic around ui parts: confirm with user via AskUserQuestion: name (PascalCase or kebab-case; the folder is kebab-case), parent dir (default app/components), props (or "none").
4. Run from the repo root: ./.gaia/cli/gaia scaffold component <Name> [flags] (the package comes from the registry, not the working directory).
5. Verify: pnpm typecheck clean. Open the new files, sanity-check the props.
6. If user wants more (variants, conditional rendering, complex children): edit the generated files. The skill does not regenerate. Before hand-editing, read one or two existing components with a similar shape and follow their pattern; style with role tokens and cva for variants (frontend/.claude/skills/tailwind/SKILL.md).

Adopter notes

• Registry hooks land in ~/hooks as kebab-case use-*.ts files, which GAIA's layout accepts.
• The utils alias in components.json is required by the config schema but unused: registry files import cn from the cn package, so shadcn add writes no util file.

Flags

• --no-story is refused (exit 1, nothing written): the story is the component's test, so a component cannot be scaffolded without one
• --parent <dir>, non-default parent dir, an existing app/components[/...] folder (e.g. app/components/form) or app/pages/<path> to colocate the component in a page folder. A parent equal to or under app/components/ui, or outside app/components and app/pages, is refused; the layout rule is in frontend/.claude/rules/coding-guidelines-react.md
• --props "a:string,b:number", typed props rendered as a Props alias and destructured in the signature. Only top-level commas separate props, so comma-bearing types (Record<K, V>, (a, b) => void, tuples) are supported within a single entry.

The story is the test

The scaffold writes tests/index.stories.tsx with a Default story, a Renders story and a play function on Renders, and no test file. Stories run as tests under @storybook/addon-vitest in headless Chromium (run pnpm install:browsers once), and addon-a11y axe-checks every story, so a story that renders a violation fails with no extra test. Import expect, within and userEvent from storybook/test.

With --props, the scaffolder fills representative values (title="title", count={0}, ...) at the story's render site. Replace the placeholders with realistic ones. The scaffolded play is a starting point, not complete evidence: add a story with a play per behavior (interactions, state transitions, error paths) as the component grows, and for an interactive component assert a keyboard path and a focus outcome. How to write plays: frontend/.claude/skills/tdd-react/references/tests-react.md.