Dropdown Menu Primitive
Give every action menu in the app the same keyboard, pointer, and dismissal behaviour.
What it adds
A reusable menu primitive covering triggering, item navigation, selection, disabled items, and closing.
What your agent is told to do
5
What your agent is told to do
5-
1
Find every action menu in the app — row overflow menus, account menus, bulk-action menus, toolbar menus — and rebuild them on one primitive so they stop behaving differently from each other.
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2
Implement the full keyboard model: arrows move between items, Home and End jump to the ends, typing letters jumps to the matching item, Enter and Space activate, and Escape closes and returns focus to the trigger.
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3
Close on outside pointer press, on Escape, and on the trigger being pressed again, and always return focus to the trigger so the user is not dropped at the top of the document.
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4
Render items as a single menu semantic with roles that match their behaviour, distinguishing plain actions from checkable and radio-style items, so a screen reader announces state rather than just labels.
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5
Anchoring, flipping, and viewport clamping belong to the Popover Positioning Engine, and focus containment while the menu is open belongs to the Focus Containment Primitive. Consume both rather than reimplementing either here.
Edge cases it handles
7
Edge cases it handles
7- Arrow navigation must wrap at both ends, Home and End must reach the first and last enabled items, typing must match on the item's visible text with a short buffer that resets after a pause, and Escape must close only the innermost open menu.
- Disabled items must remain visible and announced as disabled so the user understands the action exists, but must be skipped by arrow navigation and typeahead and must not activate on click.
- Submenus open on hover with a delay and on right-arrow from the keyboard, and must tolerate the pointer travelling diagonally across a neighbouring item on the way — closing the submenu the instant the pointer leaves the parent item makes it almost unusable.
- Not every menu should close on selection. A checkbox item that toggles a column stays open so the user can toggle several; a navigation item closes immediately. Decide per item type rather than closing unconditionally.
- A menu whose items exceed the available height must scroll internally while keeping keyboard navigation scrolling the focused item into view.
- Items the current user has no permission to invoke must be absent or disabled with a reason, never present and failing on click.
- A destructive item needs visual separation from the ordinary ones, so a mis-aimed arrow key does not land on Delete beside Duplicate.
Definition of done
9
Definition of done
9- Every action menu in the app is built on the one primitive.
- Arrows, Home, End, typeahead, Enter, Space, and Escape all work in every menu.
- Disabled items are announced, skipped by navigation, and cannot be activated.
- Submenus open by pointer and by keyboard and survive diagonal pointer movement.
- Menus close on outside press, Escape, and re-trigger, and focus returns to the trigger.
- Whether an item closes the menu is defined by its type, not applied uniformly.
- Positioning and focus containment are delegated to the shared primitives.
- The feature matches the existing design system.
- No existing functionality is broken.
Related features
Screen Reader Only Utility
Screen Reader Only Utility
One tested way to add text for assistive technology without it appearing on screen.
What it does
A single visually hidden utility used for labels, instructions, and context that assistive technology needs and sighted users do not.
How it works
- 1 Find every place the app currently hides text from sight — off-screen positioning, zero dimensions, transparent colour, tiny font sizes, aria-label strings duplicating nearby copy — and consolidate them onto one utility.
- 2 Build it by clipping the element to nothing while keeping it rendered and in the accessibility tree: it must occupy no visual space and contribute nothing to layout, yet still be read in document order.
- 3 Provide a second variant that becomes visible when it receives focus, and use it for skip links and any other hidden content that is itself focusable.
Copy the prompt
No account needed
Add this feature to my app:
https://addthisfeature.com/x/screen-reader-only-utility
Avatar Group
Avatar Group
Show who is involved in a compact space without a pile of broken images.
What it does
A stacked set of member avatars with deterministic ordering, an overflow count, and access to the full list.
How it works
- 1 Find the places that show several people at once — assignees, collaborators, workspace members, comment participants — and render them through one grouped component.
- 2 Order the stack deterministically by a stable rule such as role then name, so the same group renders in the same order on every load and every device.
- 3 Cap the number shown and collapse the remainder into a single count that is announced meaningfully, not as a bare number sitting after a row of pictures.
Copy the prompt
No account needed
Add this feature to my app:
https://addthisfeature.com/x/avatar-group
Progress Indicator System
Progress Indicator System
Tell people how far along the work is, in the same way every time.
What it does
A consistent set of bars, rings, step trackers, and accompanying text for work that takes measurable time.
How it works
- 1 Identify every operation in the app that takes long enough to need feedback — uploads, imports, exports, batch actions, multi-step flows — and decide for each whether its progress is genuinely measurable.
- 2 Use a determinate form only when a real proportion is known. Where the total is unknown, use an indeterminate form and say what is happening in words rather than inventing a percentage.
- 3 Pair every indicator with text that names the operation and its current position, so the information survives for someone who cannot see the graphic.
Copy the prompt
No account needed
Add this feature to my app:
https://addthisfeature.com/x/progress-indicator-system
How it works
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1
Copy the link
Grab the Markdown instruction URL for this feature.
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2
Give it to your AI
Paste it into Claude Code, Cursor, v0, Lovable — whatever you build with.
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3
It inspects, then implements
Your agent reads your existing app first, then adds the feature to fit it.
Works with your stack
These instructions are written to adapt. They tell the agent to detect your framework, match your existing design system, and reuse what you already have — rather than assuming a particular stack.
Need it tighter than that? Customize the feature and tell it exactly what you're running.