AddThisFeature

Timeline Component

Give the app one way to render a chronological run of events.

moderate Components & Primitives

What it adds

A reusable timeline for ordered events — activity feeds, audit trails, order history, comment threads.

What your agent is told to do

5
  1. 1

    Identify every place the app already lists things in time order and unify them, rather than leaving the order history, the audit log, and the activity feed as three unrelated layouts.

  2. 2

    Define a deterministic sort for events sharing a timestamp — a secondary key such as the record identifier — so the same data always renders in the same order.

  3. 3

    Give each entry an actor, an action, an object, and a time, and let any of the four be absent without the row collapsing.

  4. 4

    Group entries by day or by burst for scanning, but keep the exact time available on each entry rather than replacing it with the group heading.

  5. 5

    Do not resolve event descriptions by looking up live records at render time. An audit entry must still read correctly after the record it refers to has been renamed or deleted.

Edge cases it handles

7
  • Two events written in the same second must not swap places between renders — order them by a stable tiebreaker so pagination does not duplicate or drop an entry.
  • Grouping by day is a scanning aid, not a replacement for precision; a user auditing an incident needs the exact timestamp, so keep it on the entry or on hover and in the title attribute.
  • A deleted user or a deleted record must still render its entry, showing a preserved name or a neutral placeholder rather than a blank, a null, or a broken avatar.
  • On narrow screens the connector rail, avatars, and timestamps compete for width — drop to a single column with the time above the entry rather than truncating the description.
  • Relative times such as two hours ago must be rendered in the reader's time zone and must not go stale on a page left open, and they must never be the only representation of the time.
  • A long timeline needs paging or windowing that loads older entries without jumping the scroll position of what the user is already reading.
  • An empty timeline needs copy explaining that nothing has happened yet, distinct from the state where a filter has excluded everything.

Definition of done

8
  • All chronological lists in the app render through the same timeline.
  • Events sharing a timestamp appear in a stable order across reloads and pages.
  • Every entry exposes its exact time in the reader's time zone.
  • Entries referring to deleted actors or records render intact with a placeholder.
  • The timeline reads as a single column on narrow screens with no truncated descriptions.
  • Loading older entries preserves the current scroll 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.