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atomic-design

Skill7 starsChanged 4 months agoMITView on GitHub

Atomic Design quick reference — levels, composition rules, tokens, naming

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  1. Distinctive:

    If you can't decide: IF it composes nothing → atom.

    line 18

≈ “Common” is an estimate: at least 1 in 5 of the 350,495 skill files we read have a rule of the same kind, not the same words. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.

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SKILL.md

Atomic Design — Quick Reference

Level Decision Table

LevelFolderComposesHas StateFetches DataReal Content
Atomcomponents/ui/NothingNoNoNo
Moleculecomponents/molecules/2–5 atomsMaybeNoNo
Organismcomponents/organisms/Molecules + atomsYesYesNo
Templatecomponents/templates/OrganismsNoNoPlaceholder
Page(route file)TemplatesNoYesReal

If you can't decide: IF it composes nothing → atom. IF it composes ≤5 atoms → molecule. IF it manages state or fetches data → organism. IF it's a full layout skeleton → template.

Composition Rules

  • Atoms: no composesSpecs, no imports of other atoms
  • Molecules: 2–5 atom imports, no data fetching, may have internal open/closed state
  • Organisms: own breakpoints, document composition in spec
  • Templates: CSS Grid or Flexbox only, must match Figma page spec
  • Pages: handle all data states — loading, empty, error, populated

File Structure

components/
  ui/            # atoms (shadcn primitives)
  molecules/
  organisms/
  templates/

Design Tokens

Global tokens  (--blue-500, --space-4)
  → Alias tokens  (--color-primary, --spacing-component)
    → Component tokens  (--button-bg, --card-radius)

Override alias tokens per theme: :root, .dark, .brand-b.

Accessibility by Level

LevelRequired
AtomARIA role, keyboard focus, contrast, label
MoleculeFocus management, error announcements
OrganismLandmark roles, skip links, focus trapping
TemplatePage title, heading hierarchy, main landmark
PageFull WCAG 2.1 AA

Naming

ElementConventionExample
ComponentsPascalCaseMetricCard
PropscamelCaseisLoading
CSS classeskebab-casetext-muted-foreground
ConstantsUPPER_SNAKEMAX_RETRY_COUNT
Tokenspath/stylecolor/primary/500

Figma ↔ Code

FigmaCode
ComponentReact component
Component SetVariant type union
Component PropertyReact prop
Auto LayoutFlexbox / Grid
Design TokenCSS Variable → Tailwind class
SectionOrganism

Anti-Patterns

  1. Premature abstraction — wait for 3+ use cases before extracting
  2. Prop explosion — 15+ props → decompose into smaller pieces
  3. CSS override chains — 5+ overrides → create a variant
  4. Token drift — hardcoded values that should be tokens
  5. Missing states — every interactive component needs: default, hover, focus, active, disabled, loading, error

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