mosaic
Work on Mosaic UI: styling a component with slot recipes (`defineSlotRecipe` / `useRecipe` / slots / variants), or building a flow — authoring a state machine…
npx skills add https://github.com/clerk/javascript --skill mosaicMosaic UI
Two things live under Mosaic, and this skill covers the how-to for both:
- Styled components are authored with StyleX —
stylex.createdeclares the styles,themePropsemits the part's public identity (the.cl-<slot>class plusdata-<axis>attrs), andmergeStylePropsfuses the two with the props the part was called with. A part takesxstyle(StyleX atoms for its root), neverclassName/style. - Flows follow a model → controller → view split — where the data comes from → what the user is doing to it → what that looks like. What crosses each boundary is plain data: no Clerk resource reaches the controller, no machine snapshot reaches the view.
model Clerk adapter: reads Clerk hooks and resources, resolves the
environment, gates permissions, and answers with plain data plus
plain callbacks under an explicit `status`. The only layer that may
import Clerk hooks or call Clerk resource methods.
controller Local state: what is open, what is in flight, what the view may do
next — held in React state or a state machine, whichever the
interaction's complexity calls for. Wraps the model's callbacks so
an action can report pending, hold the surface still while it runs,
and close on success. No Clerk imports.
view Rendering: takes plain props and callbacks, renders UI, calls them
back. No Clerk imports. No data-fetching. No machine snapshot.
A machine is not a fourth layer, and not a requirement. It is one of the two
ways a controller can hold its state, and picking one is a complexity call:
useState for a boolean that never touches async, a machine once the
interaction has an async lifecycle or two values that must change together, and
sometimes both in one controller. Either way the controller returns plain props,
so the view cannot tell and neither can its tests. Criteria and worked
before/afters: packages/mosaic/src/machine/ADOPTION.md.
references/mosaic-architecture.md (repo root, read by all agents) is the
canonical contract for the whole design system — the --cl-* tokens, the
.cl-<slot> + data-<axis> styling API, the CSS build, and the "Flow and data
architecture" section that defines the split. Read it for the what; this skill
is the how-to.
packages/mosaic/src/features/user-button/ is the fullest worked example of the split
in the repo — model, controller, view, wrapper, types, messages, and a feature
test. Copy from it.
Which reference to read
| You are… | Read |
|---|---|
Building on / authoring a headless primitive (src/primitives/) | references/headless.md |
Styling a component (tokens, stylex.create, themeProps, CSS build) | references/stylex.md |
| Building an enter/exit transition, or any motion that reads as wrong | references/motion.md |
Writing the model (the Clerk adapter, status, permissions) | references/models.md |
| Writing the controller (local state, pending, action wrapping) | references/controllers.md |
| Authoring or debugging a state machine, or wiring one to React | references/machines.md → in-tree machine/README.md |
| Writing the view (rendering plain props) | references/views.md |
| Testing a feature (feature tests, unit tests) | references/testing.md |
| Migrating a legacy component into Mosaic (the end-to-end workflow) | references/migration.md |
| Running the parity audit that guards a migration | references/parity-audit.md |
The migration workflow (migration.md) ties the flow references together: it
treats the legacy component as the spec and drives you through the model,
controller, and view layers, then verifies parity with parity-audit.md.
Documenting a component in swingset
packages/swingset/CLAUDE.md is the house style — archetypes, required section
order, meta conventions. One rule on top of it, because it is the one agents
get wrong:
The docs describe the API as it is. They do not carry the reasoning that
produced it. No "not a size, because…", no rejected alternatives, no history
of what the prop used to be. A reader is there to learn what the thing does, and
every sentence of rationale is a sentence they have to skim past to find it.
State the behaviour plainly and briefly, then stop.
<!-- no -->
### Variant
Which surface the dialog holds, and so the geometry it is given. Not a `size`,
because these are different surfaces rather than one surface at two widths — a
second card width would be a size of the `card` variant, with nowhere to sit on
this axis.
<!-- yes -->
### Variant
Which surface the dialog holds, and the geometry that comes with it.
This is the opposite of the rule for code, where a comment earns its place by
explaining what the code cannot say for itself — the cascade fight behind a
null, the measured reason a duration is what it is. Keep that reasoning where a
future maintainer will hit it, which is the source file. The trade you rejected
belongs in a code comment or the PR description; the docs get the conclusion.