Frontend & Design

Headless UI Components

Build fully accessible UI components with Headless UI, designed to integrate seamlessly with Tailwind CSS.

Claude Code Cursor Copilot Windsurf

Overview

Headless UI is a set of completely unstyled, fully accessible UI components for React and Vue, built by the Tailwind CSS team. AI agents can implement menus, listboxes, comboboxes, dialogs, disclosure panels, tabs, and transitions with built-in accessibility and keyboard navigation.

The library provides the behavior and accessibility while you bring the styles. Your AI agent can pair Headless UI components with Tailwind CSS classes to create pixel-perfect designs that are fully keyboard navigable and screen-reader friendly. The render-prop and slot patterns give you complete control over the markup.

Headless UI is lighter and more focused than Radix UI, offering fewer but highly polished components. AI agents can help you implement complex patterns like searchable selects, multi-step disclosure panels, and animated transitions using the built-in `Transition` component.

Who Is This For?

Tailwind CSS users who need accessible interactive components
Teams building custom UI kits with consistent accessibility
Vue developers who need accessible primitives matching Tailwind patterns
Developers implementing dropdown menus and modal dialogs quickly

Installation

Setup for Claude Code

npm install @headlessui/react
# For Vue: npm install @headlessui/vue

Configuration

// Listbox example
import { Listbox } from "@headlessui/react";

<Listbox value={selected} onChange={setSelected}>
  <Listbox.Button>{selected.name}</Listbox.Button>
  <Listbox.Options>
    {options.map((opt) => (
      <Listbox.Option key={opt.id} value={opt}>
        {opt.name}
      </Listbox.Option>
    ))}
  </Listbox.Options>
</Listbox>