React Frontend Skills

Production-grade AI agent skills for the modern React ecosystem, by PyModel

Quick start · Per-agent install · Skills · Why · Contributing

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What is this?

React Frontend Skills is a collection of 18 AI agent skills for the React ecosystem. Drop them into your coding assistant and it starts applying real patterns for performance, UI, testing, data, and architecture instead of whatever it remembered from 2023.

Each skill is a portable SKILL.md folder that indexes detailed references/ or rules/ files, loaded only when a task needs them. The layout follows the open agent-skills convention, so it works across major AI coding agents. A zero-dependency companion CLI handles the deterministic steps: version detection and deprecated-API scans.

Coverage: React 19 and Next.js 16 performance, Tailwind CSS v4 and shadcn/ui, testing with Vitest, Playwright and MSW, data handling with TanStack Query, Zod, React Hook Form and nuqs, plus feature-based architecture.

Quick start

One command installs everything and auto-detects the AI agents on your machine:

npx skills add PyModel/react-frontend-skills --all

Pick specific skills instead:

npx skills add PyModel/react-frontend-skills -s react,nextjs,tailwind

Install at the user level so every project sees them:

npx skills add PyModel/react-frontend-skills --all -g

This uses the open-source skills CLI. No account, no config. Skills get symlinked into your agent's directory and activate when relevant.

Or install from npm

Published as @pymodel/react-frontend-skills. Add it as a project dependency, then sync into your agent:

npm install @pymodel/react-frontend-skills
npx skills experimental_sync

experimental_sync reads the package from node_modules and installs all 18 skills into your detected agent.

Or connect through MCP

The separate @pymodel/react-frontend-skills-mcp package exposes every skill and reference file through read-only MCP tools and resources:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "react-frontend-skills": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pymodel/react-frontend-skills-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

See mcp/README.md for the tool catalog and development details.

Companion CLI

Rules that a machine can check live in code, not prose. Agents run these in the project they are editing:

npx -y @pymodel/react-frontend-skills detect   # installed versions vs. each skill's target major
npx -y @pymodel/react-frontend-skills scan     # deprecated/removed API usage → skill/rule to read
npx -y @pymodel/react-frontend-skills scan --skill zod --json

scan runs its 31 checks only for packages declared in package.json, and only when both the declared range and the installed version are at or above the major where the old API went away (--all overrides every gate). Inside a git work tree it scans what git tracks, so .gitignored copies and builds are skipped; comment lines never count. It exits 1 when it finds hits. Each hit names a rule ID, and the fix is in that skill's references/<rule>.md (or rules/<rule>.md).

detect reports range-mismatch when the resolved install is a different major than package.json declares (for example, a hoisted copy from a parent directory).

Install per agent

Target a single agent with -a <agent>. Use -s '*' for all skills and -g for a global install.

Agent	Command
Claude Code	npx skills add PyModel/react-frontend-skills -a claude-code -s '*' -y
Codex	npx skills add PyModel/react-frontend-skills -a codex -s '*' -y
Cursor	npx skills add PyModel/react-frontend-skills -a cursor -s '*' -y
OpenCode	npx skills add PyModel/react-frontend-skills -a opencode -s '*' -y
Pi	npx skills add PyModel/react-frontend-skills -a pi -s '*' -y
Kiro CLI	npx skills add PyModel/react-frontend-skills -a kiro-cli -s '*' -y

Pythinker and other agents (manual install)

Every skill ships a standard SKILL.md that indexes its rule files. Agents that read local instruction files can consume those directly, no CLI required:

# Clone once
git clone https://github.com/PyModel/react-frontend-skills.git

# Point your agent at the skills directory, or copy what you need
cp -r react-frontend-skills/skills/react   ./.agent/skills/
cp -r react-frontend-skills/skills/nextjs  ./.agent/skills/

Then reference skills/<name>/SKILL.md from your agent context. This is the path for Pythinker and custom in-house agents.

Other supported agents

The skills CLI supports dozens of agents beyond the table above, among them GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, Windsurf, Cline, Roo, Goose, Kilo, Droid, Antigravity, Trae, Warp, Zed, Continue, and Qwen Code. Run npx skills add PyModel/react-frontend-skills with no agent flag and it detects yours.

Skills included

Audited version baseline

This repository contains guidance, not runtime dependencies. Last re-audited on 2026-09-26 against these releases:

Area	Audited line
React	19.3 (react 19.3.0)
Next.js	16.3 (next 16.3.6)
TypeScript	7.0 (typescript 7.0.2)
Tailwind CSS	4.3 (tailwindcss 4.3.3)
Vitest	5.0 (vitest 5.0.2)
Playwright	1.63 (@playwright/test 1.63.0)
MSW	2.15 (msw 2.15.0)
TanStack Query	5.x (@tanstack/react-query 5.104.0)
React Hook Form	7.x (react-hook-form 7.89.0)
Zod	4.6 (zod 4.6.5)
nuqs	2.10 (nuqs 2.10.1)

For each package that changed since the 2026-08-20 baseline, every API that its release notes and migration guides list as deprecated, removed, renamed or given a new default was searched for across the rule files, and each matching section was read. Rules were not re-read line by line. New features the rules don't cover yet are not part of the audit. If your project pins a different version, trust that version's official docs over this baseline.

Core framework

Skill	Rules	What it covers
react	44	React 19 concurrent rendering, Server Components, hook optimization
nextjs	42	Next.js 16 App Router, caching, server components, routing
typescript	44	TypeScript 7 migration, compiler config, type safety, async patterns

UI and styling

Skill	Rules	What it covers
tailwind	42	Tailwind CSS v4 optimization, utility patterns, theming
shadcn	44	shadcn/ui with Radix or Base UI primitives, accessibility
ui-design	42	UI and UX practices, accessibility, responsive design
web-design-guidelines	pinned	Reviews UI code against Vercel's Web Interface Guidelines, fetched from a pinned upstream commit

Data and state

Skill	Rules	What it covers
tanstack-query	41	Data fetching, caching, mutations, optimistic updates
react-hook-form	45	Form validation, performance, field arrays
zod	46	Schema validation, type inference, error handling
nuqs	42	Type-safe URL query state for Next.js

Testing

Skill	Rules	What it covers
vitest	46	Vitest 5 setup, mocking, async testing, worker pools
playwright	45	End-to-end testing, selectors, authentication, CI
msw	48	API mocking with Mock Service Worker
tdd	42	Test-driven development methodology

Architecture and practices

Skill	Rules	What it covers
feature-arch	42	Feature-based architecture, module organization
vercel-composition-patterns	8	React composition patterns
vercel-react-best-practices	70	React performance optimization

Why

Source-grounded

Every skill is built from official documentation and patterns that held up in production work, not recycled generic advice.

Prioritized by impact

Priority	Impact	What lands here
CRITICAL	Major	Performance problems, build failures
HIGH	Significant	Noticeable improvements
MEDIUM	Important	Standard practices
LOW	Minor	Edge cases and small optimizations

Actionable rules

Each rule spells out the correct pattern with code, the anti-pattern to avoid, the reason behind it, and how to apply it.

Project structure

react-frontend-skills/
├── .github/workflows/         # CI: npm test + MCP check on Node 20 and 24
├── bin/                       # Companion CLI (detect, scan, lint)
├── mcp/                       # Publishable read-only MCP server
├── skills/
│   ├── react/                # React 19 patterns
│   ├── nextjs/               # Next.js 16 App Router
│   ├── typescript/           # TypeScript optimization
│   ├── tailwind/             # Tailwind CSS v4
│   ├── shadcn/               # shadcn/ui components
│   ├── tanstack-query/       # Data fetching and caching
│   ├── react-hook-form/      # Form handling
│   ├── zod/                  # Schema validation
│   ├── nuqs/                 # URL state management
│   ├── vitest/               # Unit testing
│   ├── playwright/           # E2E testing
│   ├── msw/                  # API mocking
│   ├── tdd/                  # TDD methodology
│   ├── feature-arch/         # Feature architecture
│   ├── ui-design/            # UI and UX practices
│   ├── vercel-composition-patterns/
│   ├── vercel-react-best-practices/
│   └── web-design-guidelines/
├── test/                      # CLI tests
├── UPSTREAM.md                # Vercel-sourced skills: local patches, sync steps
├── README.md
├── LICENSE
└── CHANGELOG.md

Every skill folder contains SKILL.md, which indexes that skill's references/ or rules/ files. npm test runs react-frontend-skills lint, which fails on unindexed rule files, broken links, stale rule counts, and descriptions over the pack-wide resident budget (280 tokens, 120 words, 15 list items across all skills).

Usage

Once installed, skills activate when your agent picks up a matching task:

// "Create a Next.js page with data fetching"  → nextjs, react, tanstack-query
// "Build a form with validation"              → react-hook-form, zod, shadcn
// "Write tests for this component"            → vitest, tdd, msw

You can also read the guidelines yourself:

cat skills/react/SKILL.md
cat skills/nextjs/references/cache-use-cache-directive.md

Contributing

Contributions are welcome.

1. Fork the repo
2. Add a skill folder under skills/your-skill/ with SKILL.md and its references/ or rules/ files
3. Run npm test. CI runs it on every pull request
4. Open a pull request

Improving an existing skill counts just as much. New rules, corrections, version bumps: open a PR. For the three Vercel-sourced skills, follow UPSTREAM.md so upstream syncs keep this repo's patches.

License

MIT, 2026 Mohamed Elkholy. See LICENSE.

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Built and maintained by elkaix · @elkaix