UI Builder

March 17, 2026 · View on GitHub

UI Builder is a shadcn/ui package that adds a Figma-style editor to your own product, letting non-developers compose pages, emails, dashboards, and white-label views with the exact React components you already ship.

Layouts are saved as plain JSON for easy versioning and can be rendered instantly with dynamic data.

UI Builder Demo

View Full Documentation

UI Builder is now part of BTST — ship full-stack features faster with production-ready plugins that generate database schemas, API routes, and pages for Next.js, TanStack Start, and React Router.

Installation

Quick Start with shadcn/ui

If you already have a shadcn/ui project:

npx shadcn@latest add https://raw.githubusercontent.com/olliethedev/ui-builder/main/registry/block-registry.json

Or start a new Next.js project with UI Builder:

npx shadcn@latest init https://raw.githubusercontent.com/olliethedev/ui-builder/main/registry/block-registry.json --base-color zinc

Optional: Add All Shadcn Components

Install the full shadcn component library with 54 pre-configured components and 124 block templates:

npx shadcn@latest add https://raw.githubusercontent.com/olliethedev/ui-builder/main/registry/shadcn-components-registry.json

Optional: Add React Email Support

Install the react-email registry when you are building email templates in UI Builder:

npx shadcn@latest add https://raw.githubusercontent.com/olliethedev/ui-builder/main/registry/react-email-components-registry.json

This installs the react-email component registry plus email-specific builder utilities (emailPageRenderer, emailCodeGenerator, and DEFAULT_EMAIL_TAILWIND_CONFIG).

For Safari/iOS compatibility with @react-email/render, add this import at the top of your email route entry file:

import "web-streams-polyfill/polyfill";

Handling Peer Dependencies

If you encounter peer dependency warnings (common with React 19), create a .npmrc file:

echo "legacy-peer-deps=true" > .npmrc

Note: Use style variables for proper page theming.

Basic Usage

import z from "zod";
import UIBuilder from "@/components/ui/ui-builder";
import { Button } from "@/components/ui/button";
import { ComponentRegistry } from "@/components/ui/ui-builder/types";
import { primitiveComponentDefinitions } from "@/lib/ui-builder/registry/primitive-component-definitions";

const myComponentRegistry: ComponentRegistry = {
  ...primitiveComponentDefinitions,
  Button: {
    component: Button,
    schema: z.object({
      className: z.string().optional(),
      children: z.any().optional(),
      variant: z.enum(["default", "destructive", "outline", "secondary", "ghost", "link"]).default("default"),
    }),
    from: "@/components/ui/button",
  },
};

export function App() {
  return <UIBuilder componentRegistry={myComponentRegistry} />;
}

Tailwind Theme Panel Override

You can override or hide the default TailwindThemePanel in the Appearance tab without replacing full panel wiring:

<UIBuilder
  componentRegistry={myComponentRegistry}
  tailwindThemePanel={false} // hide panel
/>

Or provide your own custom node:

<UIBuilder
  componentRegistry={myComponentRegistry}
  tailwindThemePanel={<MyCustomThemePanel />}
/>

Documentation

For comprehensive documentation, visit uibuilder.app:

Quick Start — Get up and running
Component Registry — Configure components
Shadcn Registry — Use pre-built shadcn components and blocks
Custom Components — Add your own components
Variables — Dynamic data binding
Rendering Pages — Render saved layouts

Development

# Build component registries
npm run build-all-registries

# Run tests
npm run test

# Sync with latest shadcn components
npm run sync-shadcn

Breaking Changes

v2.0.0

Internal structure changes. Delete old /ui-builder and /lib/ui-builder directories before updating.

v1.0.0

Removed _page_ layer type. Use any component type as root.
componentRegistry is now a prop, not a standalone file.

See the full changelog for details.