For years, frontend developers have relied on component libraries — think Bootstrap, Vuetify, Material UI, or Ant Design — to build interfaces faster. These packages offered a large set of ready-to-use components, but they also came with tradeoffs: heavy dependencies, opinionated styling, and limited flexibility when it came to customization.
In 2024–2025, a new paradigm started to take shape. Instead of installing a massive library, developers began pulling components from registries, assembling them piece by piece — just like importing utilities or icons. This modular, source-first approach is being popularized by projects like shadcn/ui, and it’s reshaping how we think about UI development.
Let’s dive into how it works, why it matters, and what’s coming next.
Traditional component libraries give you everything at once: buttons, modals, tooltips, tables, and themes — all bundled under a single npm package. While convenient, this model creates problems:
Component registries flip the model. Instead of installing a monolithic package, you fetch components as source code, directly into your project. Each component becomes part of your codebase — version-controlled, editable, and styleable as you wish.
This approach borrows ideas from code generators (like npx create-component) but integrates them with ecosystem registries that make discovery and updates seamless.
A component registry is essentially a collection of installable component definitions that can be pulled into your project dynamically. Think of it like npm for UI source files — except instead of importing a compiled module, you import the actual code.
For example, the shadcn/ui registry for Vue or React lets you install components like this:
npx shadcn-vue add button
This command doesn’t install a dependency — it scaffolds the component directly into your components/ directory, with its styles, variants, and composables ready to use.
The registry also manages:
This approach is reproducible and extensible — you can define your own registry for internal use, just like a private npm registry.
When shadcn/ui first appeared in 2023, it took the React community by storm for one reason:
You don’t install a library. You copy the code.
Instead of providing pre-built components, shadcn offers component templates that are integrated into your project’s stack — including Tailwind configuration, accessibility primitives, and variant utilities.
node_modules.This makes shadcn components feel like your components — not black boxes. You can modify them freely, extend them, or remove them without affecting external dependencies.
Registries are now emerging as universal sources for components across frameworks.
shadcn/ui, panda-registry, and custom registries for design systems.shadcn-vue, Nuxt UI, and the upcoming unified registry standard.For teams, this means you can build a private component registry — a shared catalog of base components, utilities, or patterns that engineers can install across projects via a single command:
npx my-registry add card
Each install generates actual code files consistent with your internal conventions.
The new registry-based model fixes many issues we’ve lived with for years:
| Problem (Old Way) | Solution (Registry Model) |
|---|---|
| Vendor lock-in with large libraries | Full ownership of source code |
| Difficult customization | Code is editable and versioned |
| Breaking changes on upgrades | Components evolve independently |
| Heavy runtime dependencies | Lightweight, static source imports |
| Style collisions | Local Tailwind or CSS scopes |
It aligns with modern development principles:
Most registries rely on a config file (components.json, ui.config.ts, etc.) that defines your setup:
{
"registry": "https://registry.shadcn.com",
"componentDir": "./components/ui",
"prefix": "Ui"
}
When you run npx shadcn-vue add dialog, it:
dialog component from the registry.<UiDialog>).This lets you build an entire design system à la carte — one piece at a time.
The concept of registries is expanding beyond shadcn. Frameworks like Nuxt UI, PandaCSS, and VitePress Themes are already experimenting with the same principles.
We’re heading toward a future where you can:
This gives teams the power of a library — with the flexibility of owning every line of code.
The frontend ecosystem is shifting from installing packages to installing source. Instead of treating UI components as external dependencies, we now integrate them as first-class citizens of our projects.
Tools like shadcn/ui are pioneering this philosophy: your design system, your code, your control.
The result? Cleaner codebases, consistent UI, and the freedom to evolve your frontend architecture — one component at a time.