Agent-Native Toolkit

Use this skill when deciding whether app chrome, settings, collaboration, sharing, navigation, organization, setup, history, comments, or agent UX should be built app-locally or moved into reusable framework/toolkit pieces.

Core Rule

Apps own domain models, domain actions, and product-specific workflows. The framework and @agent-native/toolkit own repeated workspace behavior users expect to work the same everywhere.

Move behavior into shared toolkit primitives when it is:

• workspace-wide, such as settings, nav, search, org membership, or setup
• agent-visible, such as context, actions, run progress, or proof-of-done
• governed, such as secrets, permissions, sharing, audit, or billing
• repeated by two or more apps
• not tied to one domain model

Keep behavior app-local when the abstraction would hide important domain language or make a simple app-specific workflow harder to understand.

Discover Before Building

Before creating an app-local version of repeated workspace or agent UI:

1. Check the reusable kits below and the installed package documentation.
2. Search installed public components and source with docs-search and source-search.
3. Run agent-native eject --list to see the version-matched units published by the packages installed in this app.
4. Read customizing-agent-native and configure, compose, or eject the smallest unit instead of recreating shared behavior from memory.

Use public package exports at runtime. Published source and ejection manifests are discovery and ownership-transfer mechanisms, not private runtime APIs.

Design-System Boundary

Every app keeps an explicit design-system seam in app/design-system.ts using defineDesignSystem from @agent-native/toolkit/design-system, and supplies it to ToolkitProvider. The semantic contract contains:

• nine leaf components: ActionButton, IconButton, TextField, TextArea, Spinner, Skeleton, Status, Surface, and Avatar
• eight behavior components: Tooltip, Menu, Popover, Dialog, Picker, Checkbox, Switch, and Tabs

These are semantic contracts, not styling contracts. An adapter may use Tailwind/shadcn, MUI-style theme providers, React Aria, CSS modules, CSS-in-JS, or another React design system. Do not assume CVA, utility classes, or even a className; behavior adapters may supply their overlay and focus implementation wholesale while honoring portal, focus-restoration, keyboard, dismissal, ARIA, and z-index interoperability.

Pages, routes, and domain components import ordinary controls through the app's local adapter layer, usually @/components/ui/*. They must not import @agent-native/toolkit/ui/* directly. Toolkit feature exports are still the right home for shared workspace behavior; their presentation flows through the registered semantic components, feature controller, and product-level slots.

Customer adapter packages are normal npm packages imported explicitly by the app. Never auto-detect them or load React components from JSON. Run the adapter against @agent-native/toolkit/conformance in customer CI before adopting it.

Settings Direction

Durable settings belong in the Settings app or a registered settings route. The agent sidebar should not become a second settings app. It can show contextual quick controls and deep links such as:

• /settings/ai
• /settings/connections
• /settings/secrets
• /settings/usage
• /settings/apps/:appId

The shared Account section is the canonical profile surface at /settings#account. It owns the editable display name and existing avatar control through the authenticated get-user-profile and update-user-profile actions. Shared workspace chrome such as OrgSwitcher should link to this surface rather than creating an app-local profile page.

When adding a new API key, OAuth grant, provider connection, model selector, app preference, notification preference, or usage/billing surface, register it as a settings tab or app settings panel first. Only add sidebar UI when it is needed in the moment of agent use.

Reusable Kits

• Settings kit: a searchable settings page with account, workspace, AI models, LLM keys, connections, secrets, usage, notifications, changelog, and app-specific panels. Search is on by default; register a SettingsSearchEntry per control so users find settings by name across tabs.
• Collaboration kit: Yjs docs, presence, agent presence, live cursors, remote selections, recent edit highlights, real-time sync indicators, and undo/redo grouping.
• Sharing kit: private/workspace/org/public-link access, invites, roles, expirations, agent-readable links, and resource registration.
• Navigation and command kit: app shell, side nav, breadcrumbs, app switcher, command palette entries, recent resources, pinned resources, and global search.
• Organization kit: folders, tags, favorites, archive, trash, ownership, membership, and common resource metadata.
• Setup and connections kit: declarative setup requirements, model readiness, missing-secret states, OAuth grants, and provider connection health.
• Agent UX kit: sidebar, composer, staged context, mentions, voice, human approval, generative UI, progress, and screen-state exposure.
• Chat history kit: presentational chat lists and recent-chat rails belong in Toolkit; Core keeps thread persistence, agent execution, transport, and page-to-sidebar handoff. Use Toolkit's ChatHistoryRail for the standard five-item sidebar preview and a footer row with New chat followed by an ellipsis disclosure up to fifteen. Apps inject routing, labels, and domain actions.
• Agent page kit: the full-page /agent surface (AgentTabsPage from @agent-native/core/client) with Context, Files, Connections, Jobs, and Access tabs plus a Personal/Organization scope toggle. The canonical home for context transparency, MCP servers, A2A remote agents, recurring jobs/automations, and external-client connect flows. See the agent-page skill.
• History and recovery kit: audit log, activity feed, version history, checkpoints, undo, redo, restore, and proof-of-done.
• Comments and review kit: anchored comments, pins, mentions, review requests, resolved threads, agent follow-up tasks, and notifications.
• Workflow and observability kit: notifications, approvals, scheduled work, background runs, recurring jobs, traces, evals, feedback, and run timelines.

Implementation Checklist

When adding or refactoring one of these areas:

1. Search existing framework and template code for duplicated UI or actions.
2. Decide the shared contract: data shape, action API, feature-level headless controller, default view, semantic components, and product-level render slots.
3. Keep shared data provider-agnostic and scoped by auth/sharing rules.
4. Expose the same capability to the UI and agent through actions or documented client helpers.
5. Register app-specific labels, routes, resource adapters, and settings panels instead of hardcoding app names in core UI.
6. Update docs and relevant skills so future apps discover the shared path.
7. Keep the component easy to adopt piecemeal: expose props/slots first and ship readable source plus a complete ejection unit so apps can take ownership of the smallest feature when needed. See customizing-agent-native for the configure → compose → eject → propose seam ladder.
8. Keep one controller as the source of truth for the default and custom render paths. A custom design must not fork actions, analytics, async state, or accessibility behavior.
9. Verify the default adapter and at least one non-Tailwind adapter with the conformance kit, including focus and portal stacking across mixed overlay implementations.

Related Skills

Read these alongside this skill when the work touches the specific area:

• sharing
• real-time-collab
• real-time-sync
• client-side-routing
• context-awareness
• onboarding
• secrets
• audit-log
• observability
• frontend-design