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Stepper Component

Show people where they are in a multi-step flow and what is still ahead of them.

moderate Components & Primitives

What it adds

A single stepper used by every staged flow in the app, showing step order, completion, and errors.

What your agent is told to do

5
  1. 1

    Find every staged flow the app already has — onboarding, checkout, import wizards, multi-page settings — and render them all through one stepper rather than the three variants that have grown up separately.

  2. 2

    Keep completion and navigation as two distinct concepts. A step can be complete without being current, and a step the user is allowed to jump back to is not the same as a step they have finished.

  3. 3

    Model optional and skippable steps explicitly, and show a skipped step as skipped rather than as complete or as untouched. A user who skipped payment details needs to see that it is still outstanding.

  4. 4

    Surface validation failures on the step that owns them, so a user standing on step four can see that step two is broken and reach it in one click.

  5. 5

    Do not make the stepper the source of truth for flow state. It reads from whatever already drives the flow; if it holds its own copy the two will disagree the first time a step is added.

Edge cases it handles

7
  • Marking a step as reachable is not the same as marking it done — a stepper that lets the user click ahead to step five must not therefore paint steps three and four as complete.
  • Optional steps need their own treatment, and a step the user deliberately skipped must remain visibly outstanding rather than quietly counting toward the finish.
  • A step holding a validation error must say so on the step indicator itself, with the error state distinguishable from the current-step state and not conveyed by colour alone.
  • On narrow screens a horizontal row of seven steps becomes unreadable — collapse to a compact form such as step three of seven with the current step's label, and keep the full list reachable.
  • Steps added or removed mid-flow, for example a billing step that only appears on a paid plan, must renumber without stranding the user on a step that no longer exists.
  • The current step must be announced to screen readers when it changes, and completed steps must carry their state in the accessible name, not in an icon with no text alternative.
  • Returning to a flow from a link or a reload must restore the stepper to the persisted position rather than resetting to step one.

Definition of done

8
  • Every staged flow in the app renders through the same stepper.
  • Completion, current position, skipped, and error are four visually and textually distinct states.
  • A step carrying a validation error is identifiable from any other step and navigable in one action.
  • Narrow viewports show a compact stepper with no horizontal overflow.
  • Step changes and step states are announced to assistive technology.
  • Adding or removing a conditional step renumbers the flow without breaking the user's position.
  • The feature matches the existing design system.
  • No existing functionality is broken.

Related features

How it works

  1. 1

    Copy the link

    Grab the Markdown instruction URL for this feature.

  2. 2

    Give it to your AI

    Paste it into Claude Code, Cursor, v0, Lovable — whatever you build with.

  3. 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.