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Sticky Table Header

Keep column labels on screen so people know what they are reading halfway down.

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What it adds

Column headers that remain visible while the table body scrolls, with the header and body staying in alignment.

What your agent is told to do

5
  1. 1

    Find the tables long enough for the header to leave the viewport and pin those headers only; a table that fits on one screen gains nothing and pays the cost.

  2. 2

    Keep the header in the same table structure as the body so column widths are resolved once and the two cannot drift apart. Splitting the header into a separate element forces you to measure and copy widths, which fails on every resize and every content change.

  3. 3

    Establish which scroll container owns the stickiness — the page, or the table's own overflow region — and pin against that one, accounting for any header, toolbar, or filter bar already occupying the top edge.

  4. 4

    Recompute nothing on scroll. Alignment must hold structurally, so that resizing a column, toggling density, or loading another page of rows keeps the header and body in step without a measurement pass.

  5. 5

    Do not let the pinned header cover the element that has just received focus. Scrolling a row into view must offset by the header's height, and cell rendering itself belongs to Data Table Cell Primitives rather than being reworked here.

Edge cases it handles

7
  • Header and body widths must stay synchronized as content changes; any approach that measures the body and applies the result to a detached header will fall out of alignment on the first column resize, font load, or long value.
  • Nested scroll containers defeat sticky positioning silently — an ancestor with overflow hidden or auto, or a transform creating a containing block, will pin the header to the wrong thing or to nothing at all. Identify the real scroll parent before choosing an offset.
  • Keyboard navigation and in-page search scroll a target to the top of the container, directly under the pinned header. Add scroll padding equal to the header height so the focused cell lands below it.
  • On narrow screens where the table stacks into cards or rows, the pinned header has nothing to label and must be removed rather than left floating above a stacked layout with its own repeated labels.
  • A frozen first column and a pinned header intersect at the top-left cell, which needs its own stacking treatment or it will slide under one of them.
  • The pinned header must sit below modals, dropdowns, and the app's own sticky chrome in the stacking order, not above them.
  • On short viewports a tall header plus surrounding chrome can leave only a few rows visible; cap the pinned height or fall back to a non-sticky header.

Definition of done

9
  • Column labels remain visible at every scroll position in long tables.
  • Header and body columns stay aligned through resizes, density changes, and newly loaded rows, with no measurement on scroll.
  • The header pins against the correct scroll container and clears any existing sticky chrome.
  • A cell reached by keyboard or by in-page search is never hidden behind the header.
  • Stacked mobile layouts render without an orphaned pinned header.
  • A frozen first column and the pinned header do not overlap at their intersection.
  • Modals, menus, and toasts render above the pinned header.
  • 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.