create-module

name	create-module
description	Use when adding a new module, utility, helper, hook, or any piece of logic to a frontend project — keeps UI components thin by routing logic into the right layer (utils / libs / hooks / composables / stores) behind a typed interface, with a barrel export and a colocated unit test.

Create Module

The everyday authoring move: you need new code — a helper, a hook, a wrapper, some logic. This skill routes it to the right layer with a clean boundary, so logic never accretes inside UI components.

The rule everything serves: components render and wire events; they hold no logic. Formatting, derivation, IO, business rules, and non-trivial effects live in a typed module the component calls.

1. Audit current state

ls src/utils src/libs src/hooks src/composables src/stores 2>/dev/null   # which homes exist?
grep -rn "<the thing you're about to write>" src/ 2>/dev/null            # already exists? reuse, don't duplicate
grep '"@/\*"' tsconfig.json tsconfig.app.json 2>/dev/null                 # @/ alias present?

Prerequisites: set-up-frontend-structure (the utils/, libs/, hooks/|composables/, stores/ folders + barrels) and the @/ alias (configure-typescript). If a home folder is missing, create it flat and note the deviation.

2. Detect framework

React → src/hooks/. Vue → src/composables/. The other homes (utils/, libs/, stores/) are identical.

3. Classify — where does it go?

Walk top to bottom; the first row that fits wins.

What you're writing	Home	The boundary it exposes
Pure function — deterministic, no deps, no side effects	src/utils/	named export, explicit input/output types
Wraps a third-party lib, or does IO (fetch, storage, SDK)	src/libs/	a small seam surface; internals stay private
Stateful view logic — lifecycle, reads a store/query, returns handlers	src/hooks/ | src/composables/	returns data + handlers, never internals
Shared client UI state read across unrelated parts of the tree	src/stores/	one store per domain; inline selectors
Renders UI	a component in the right atomic layer	imports only from lower layers

If a thing both renders and computes, that's two modules: a thin component + an extracted hook/util.

4. The thin-UI rule — extract logic out of components

A component should read like a description of its output. These are smells that logic must move:

• a non-trivial useEffect / watch → a hook/composable
• a map/filter/reduce chain over domain data → a utils/ pure function
• inline fetch / localStorage / SDK calls → a libs/ seam (or a query hook)
• date/number/currency formatting → a utils/ Intl helper

5. Author it (extracted — React + Vue)

Pure helpers in src/utils/ (framework-agnostic, trivially testable):

// src/utils/openTodos.ts
import type { Todo } from '@/libs/queryKeys';
export const openTodos = (todos: Todo[]): Todo[] => todos.filter((t) => !t.done);

// src/utils/formatCount.ts
export const formatCount = (n: number, noun: string): string =>
  `${n} ${noun}${n === 1 ? '' : 's'}`;

The hook/composable composes the query + the pure utils:

// React — src/hooks/useTodoSummary.ts
import { useTodos } from '@/hooks/useTodos';
import { openTodos } from '@/utils/openTodos';

export function useTodoSummary() {
  const { data: todos = [] } = useTodos({ status: 'all' });
  return { openCount: openTodos(todos).length };
}

// Vue — src/composables/useTodoSummary.ts
import { computed } from 'vue';
import { useTodos } from '@/composables/useTodos';
import { openTodos } from '@/utils/openTodos';

export function useTodoSummary() {
  const todos = useTodos(computed(() => ({ status: 'all' as const })));
  const openCount = computed(() => openTodos(todos.data.value ?? []).length);
  return { openCount };
}

The component is now just render:

// React — src/components/molecules/TodoSummary/TodoSummary.tsx
import { useTodoSummary } from '@/hooks/useTodoSummary';
import { formatCount } from '@/utils/formatCount';

export function TodoSummary() {
  const { openCount } = useTodoSummary();
  return <p>{formatCount(openCount, 'open todo')}</p>;
}

<!-- Vue — src/components/molecules/TodoSummary/TodoSummary.vue -->
<script setup lang="ts">
import { useTodoSummary } from '@/composables/useTodoSummary';
import { formatCount } from '@/utils/formatCount';
const { openCount } = useTodoSummary();
</script>
<template><p>{{ formatCount(openCount, 'open todo') }}</p></template>

6. Boundary + barrel

Add the module to its layer's index.ts barrel (the layer's single re-export home). Import a module by its path — @/utils/openTodos, @/hooks/useTodoSummary — and never reach past it into another module's private internals. One module, one responsibility; file name matches the primary export.

7. Colocated unit test

Extraction's payoff — pure logic tests with zero setup:

// tests/unit/openTodos.test.ts
import { describe, it, expect } from 'vitest';
import { openTodos } from '@/utils/openTodos';

describe('openTodos', () => {
  it('keeps only not-done todos', () => {
    const todos = [
      { id: '1', text: 'a', done: false },
      { id: '2', text: 'b', done: true },
    ];
    expect(openTodos(todos)).toEqual([{ id: '1', text: 'a', done: false }]);
  });
});

(tests/unit runs in Node — see configure-test-stack.)

8. Graduation

• A utils/ helper that grows a third-party dependency → move it to libs/ (it's now a wrapper, not a pure helper).
• Logic accreting inside a component → pull it into a hook (stateful) or a util (pure) the moment it stops being trivial.

9. Verify

pnpm tsc --noEmit                              # the module + its consumers type-check
pnpm vitest run tests/unit/openTodos.test.ts   # the colocated test passes (if configure-test-stack ran)

References

• ./module-patterns.md — the thin-UI rule, the decision table, the typed-surface boundary, pure-by-default, the graduation rule, and when a feature folder beats layers.
• ../set-up-frontend-structure/SKILL.md — the folders this routes into.
• ../_shared/conventions.md — naming, barrels, libs/ vs utils/.