Component Library Examples Teams Actually Use [With Breakdowns]

Your team built a component library. Six months later, designers still export assets from Figma and developers still write custom buttons. The library exists—but nobody uses it.

The problem isn’t the components. It’s everything around them.

Most component library examples you’ll find online showcase polished open-source projects like Material UI or Chakra. They’re impressive. They’re also built by dedicated teams with thousands of contributors and over a decade of iteration. That’s not your reality.

Industry data suggests 25-40% of enterprise design systems fail or get abandoned within two years—not because the components were poorly built, but because governance lapsed, adoption stalled, or the team that built it moved on.

What you need are examples of component libraries that work inside real organizations—the structure, documentation, and governance patterns that determine whether your library becomes the foundation your team builds on or another artifact gathering dust in your repo.

After shipping design systems across 40+ enterprise products, we’ve seen both outcomes. Here’s what separates the libraries teams extend from the ones they abandon.

What Does a Component Library Actually Include?

A component library includes four core elements: UI components (buttons, forms, cards), design tokens (colors, spacing, typography values), documentation (usage guidelines, code examples, do/don’t patterns), and governance (ownership, contribution process, update cadence). Without all four, libraries get built but not used.

Most teams focus on the first two and wonder why adoption stalls.

UI components are what everyone pictures—the buttons, inputs, modals, and cards. These are the visible building blocks. But components alone are just code. They need context.

Design tokens are the values underneath. A button’s background color isn’t “blue”—it’s --color-primary-500, which maps to a specific hex value that updates globally when the brand evolves. Tokens create consistency without requiring designers and developers to memorize values.

Documentation is where most libraries fail. Not because teams don’t write docs—they do. But they document what the component is, not when to use it. The difference matters. We’ll dig into this in a later section.

Governance answers the question nobody wants to ask: who owns this thing? When a developer needs a variant that doesn’t exist, what’s the process? When a component is deprecated, how does the team find out? Skip governance, and your library becomes a snapshot of one moment in time—frozen, then ignored.

Three Component Library Structures That Get Adopted

Not all component libraries are organized the same way. After building and inheriting dozens of them, we’ve seen three structural patterns that consistently drive adoption—and a few anti-patterns that don’t.

Pattern 1: The Atomic Foundation

Based on Brad Frost’s Atomic Design methodology, this structure organizes components by complexity:

/components
  /atoms        (buttons, inputs, labels, icons)
  /molecules    (search bars, form fields with labels, card headers)
  /organisms    (navigation bars, hero sections, data tables)
  /templates    (page layouts, dashboard shells)

Why it works: Teams with mixed experience levels can navigate intuitively. Junior developers know where to find basic elements; senior developers know where complex patterns live. The hierarchy also mirrors how components get composed—atoms combine into molecules, molecules into organisms.

Where it struggles: The lines between categories blur. Is a button group an atom or a molecule? Debates slow teams down. Works best when you document your specific definitions upfront.

Pattern 2: The Domain-Driven Library

This structure organizes by product area or user journey rather than complexity:

/components
  /core         (shared across all products: buttons, typography, layout)
  /navigation   (menus, breadcrumbs, tabs, sidebars)
  /data-display (tables, charts, cards, lists)
  /forms        (inputs, selectors, validation, file uploads)
  /feedback     (alerts, toasts, modals, loading states)

Why it works: Developers searching for “something to display a data table” find it faster than hunting through complexity tiers. The categories match how developers think about what they’re building, not how designers think about composition.

Where it struggles: Cross-cutting concerns get messy. Where does a “form inside a modal” pattern live? Requires clear rules for composition patterns.

Pattern 3: The Hybrid (Most Common in Enterprise)

Enterprise teams rarely start fresh. They inherit legacy systems, support multiple products, and deal with varying levels of React, Vue, or framework-agnostic needs. The hybrid structure acknowledges this reality:

/design-tokens     (platform-agnostic values)
/core-components   (framework-agnostic HTML/CSS)
/react-components  (React implementations)
/figma-library     (design source files)
/documentation     (usage guidelines, patterns)

Why it works: It separates concerns clearly. Designers work in Figma. Developers work in their framework. Tokens sync across both. Nobody steps on each other’s toes, and teams using different tech stacks can still share foundations. This kind of scalable architecture is what makes libraries last beyond the initial build.

The key insight: The structure matters less than the consistency. Pick a pattern, document why you chose it, and stick with it. Libraries fail when every contributor organizes components their own way.

The Documentation Pattern That Drives Adoption

Here’s a hard truth: developers don’t read documentation until they’re stuck. And when they’re stuck, they need answers fast.

The libraries that get adopted answer three questions on every component page:

1. When do I use this? (Not what it is—when it’s the right choice)
2. What are my options? (Variants, props, configurations)
3. What’s the code? (Copy-paste examples that actually work)

Most documentation handles #2 and #3 but skips #1 entirely. That’s a mistake.

Example of weak documentation:

“The Button component renders a clickable button element. It accepts variant, size, and disabled props.”

Example of strong documentation:

“Use Button for primary actions users take on a page—submitting forms, confirming decisions, or navigating to key destinations. For secondary actions within a workflow, use TextButton. For destructive actions, use Button with variant='danger' and always pair with a confirmation modal.”

The second version tells developers when this component is the right answer. That’s what drives adoption. Developers stop writing custom buttons because they trust the library has already solved their specific case.

The do/don’t pattern accelerates this. Every component page should include:

• ✓ Do: Use primary buttons for one main action per screen
• ✗ Don’t: Use multiple primary buttons in the same view
• ✓ Do: Pair destructive buttons with confirmation modals
• ✗ Don’t: Use danger styling for non-destructive warnings

Nathan Curtis calls this “showing the edges”—demonstrating not just how to use components, but where their appropriate use ends.

Component Library Governance: Who Owns What

Governance sounds bureaucratic until you’re three sprints in and nobody knows who’s supposed to update the date picker that’s broken on mobile.

The libraries that last have clear answers to three governance questions:

Who can contribute? Some teams gate all changes through a dedicated design systems team. Others allow any developer to submit components that meet standards. Neither is wrong—but undefined contribution models mean components either pile up without review or never get added because “that’s not my job.”

What’s the review process? A component isn’t just code. It’s also design specs, documentation, accessibility compliance, and cross-browser testing. Define what “done” means before the first contribution request arrives.

How do changes ship? Semantic versioning matters. When a developer imports @company/components, they need to know whether updating to the latest version will break their build. Breaking changes need major version bumps, clear changelogs, and deprecation warnings with migration paths.

The adoption dashboard nobody builds (but should):

Track these three metrics:

• Component coverage: What percentage of UI elements in production use library components vs. custom code?
• Time to first use: How long does it take a new developer to ship their first feature using the library?
• Contribution rate: Are teams adding components, or is the library stagnant?

If coverage is low, your library doesn’t have what teams need. If time-to-first-use is high, your onboarding or documentation is the problem. If contribution rate is zero, governance is either too heavy or undefined.

Signs Your Component Library Is Working (And Signs It’s Not)

Before diving into diagnostics, it’s worth noting that evaluating your component library shares a lot with conducting a UX audit—you’re looking for friction, measuring adoption, and identifying where the experience breaks down.

After the initial build, how do you know if your component library is actually successful? Here’s what we look for:

<table> <thead> <tr> <th>Signal</th> <th>Library That’s Working</th> <th>Library That’s Failing</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td><strong>Designer behavior</strong></td> <td>Designers use Figma library as single source; request new components through process</td> <td>Designers detach components and customize locally; Figma library outdated</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Developer behavior</strong></td> <td>Developers check library first; file issues for missing patterns</td> <td>Developers write custom components; say “faster to build it myself”</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>New team member onboarding</strong></td> <td>Ships first feature in days using existing components</td> <td>Asks “where do I find the button styles?” repeatedly</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Contribution activity</strong></td> <td>Teams submit new components; active Slack channel or discussion board</td> <td>Last commit was 6 months ago; no new components since launch</td> </tr> <tr> <td><strong>Design consistency</strong></td> <td>Different product areas look cohesive; users recognize the brand</td> <td>Every team’s UI looks slightly different; “which button is right?”</td> </tr> </tbody> </table>

The honest assessment: most libraries land somewhere in between. Partial adoption is normal. The question is whether adoption is trending up or down—and whether you have visibility into which parts of the library are used versus ignored.

Building a Component Library Your Team Will Extend

Component libraries fail when they’re built as deliverables rather than capabilities. This is where product design that transfers knowledge matters more than pixel-perfect mockups. A vendor hands over a Figma file and a component repo, the engagement ends, and six months later the library is frozen in time while the product has moved on.

The libraries that last are the ones teams know how to extend themselves.

That means:

• Developers pair on the initial build, not just receive it
• Documentation includes “how to add a component,” not just “how to use components”
• Governance is lightweight enough that adding a new variant doesn’t require a committee
• Design and code stay in sync because the process makes sync easy, not heroic

When we ship a component library, the goal isn’t a perfect artifact. It’s a team that can add their next 20 components without us. The playbook, the contribution workflow, the documentation templates—those stay after we leave.

Your component library should be a foundation your team builds on, not a museum piece they work around.

Ready to build a component library your team will actually use? We’d like to hear what you’re working with—whether that’s starting fresh, rescuing an abandoned library, or figuring out why adoption stalled. Start a conversation and we’ll share what we’ve seen work.