I Built an Accessible React Component Library from Scratch — Here's What I Learned

Why I built it

Every time I started a new React project I'd reach for a UI library and hit the same wall. The big ones (MUI, Chakra) bring too much opinion and bulk. The headless ones (Radix, Headless UI) require you to wire up all the styles yourself. shadcn/ui is great but it's built entirely on Radix under the hood.

I wanted something in between — fully accessible, styled out of the box, but with no heavy runtime dependencies beyond React and Tailwind. So I built it myself.

The tech stack

React 19 — ref as a prop, no forwardRef needed