shadcn-ui-blocks: a gallery of copy-and-paste Shadcn UI blocks

A gallery, and the idea behind it

The repository description is one line: customized Shadcn UI components and blocks, just copy and paste. The readme expands it into a description of a curated collection of blocks and examples for Shadcn UI components, and it states the purpose directly. The platform is designed to help developers preview and copy ready-made code snippets for various components, saving time and enhancing productivity in their projects.

That is a narrow product, and the narrowness is the point. The Shadcn approach to components is that you do not install a component library and import from it, you copy the source of a component into your own repository and own it from then on. The consequence is that the interesting part of the experience is finding the component, and this site exists to be the place where you find it.

The features list says the same thing four ways. There are component previews, so you can quickly see how each component looks and functions before taking it. There are code snippets, copied effortlessly for use in your own projects. There is a variety of components, with blocks for buttons, forms, modals, navigation, and more. And there is a developer-friendly interface, described as a clean and intuitive layout for finding the perfect block.

The fourth one is the odd one out, because the other three are about the content and that one is about the search. A catalogue of blocks is only useful if you can find the one you want in under a minute, so the layout is part of the product rather than decoration.

The project is MIT licensed, the site is shadcnui-blocks.com, and the last push was on 2026-09-18. There are no releases, which is what you would expect for a repository whose artefact is a website and a set of files you copy rather than a package you install.

The readme closes with an inspiration note that explains the intent better than the feature list does. The platform is inspired by the simplicity and flexibility of Shadcn UI components, and the aim is to make building user interfaces faster and more accessible.

The stack, and the split between the site and the catalogue

The tech stack section lists four things: Next.js, Tailwind CSS, TypeScript, and Shadcn UI itself. The package manifest confirms it and adds a lot more.

The framework is Next.js at version 16, the development server is started with the turbopack flag, and React is at 19. The styling is Tailwind, and the component primitives come from two sources at once: the individual Radix packages, including the visually hidden one, and the unified radix-ui package pinned to the latest version. There is also a separate package for the base component set, and the appearance of both is meaningful for what the site publishes.

Beyond the components, the dependency list reads like a list of everything a component gallery needs in order to demonstrate a component honestly. There is a table library, a carousel library, a form library with its resolver package, an input for one time codes, a date picker, a dropzone, a resizable panel set, a command palette, a hotkeys hook, a theme switcher, a motion library, an animation library, a class name utility, a variant helper, a date library, an icon set, a number animation component, and a shader package for gradients. Each of those exists because some block on the site uses it, and a gallery that only showed buttons would not be a useful demonstration of anything.

The manifest also shows the parts of the site itself. There is a post-hoc analytics client, which tells you the site tracks its visitors. There is a package for generating images for social sharing. There is a syntax highlighting transformer, which is what turns the code snippets on the page into highlighted code rather than plain text, and a utility that converts HTML into a JSX runtime, which is presumably how a highlighted block is turned into a live preview. There is a markdown utility, a dotenv loader, and a component for rendering a design token theme.

The scripts in the manifest are the clearest statement of how the site is built, and they are worth reading in order because they are the pipeline. The development and build commands are the standard Next.js ones. Then there is a script for generating block screenshots, which runs a TypeScript file through a loader. Then the registry scripts: one generates the registry, one checks it, and one does both the generation and a build of the registries into static output directories.

That last script is the key to the whole project, and it is what the next section is about.

The registry, and why it is generated

The repository contains three registry files, and the names are the clue to what they are for. There is a base registry, a Radix registry, and a plain registry, and each one is built into its own output directory under the public path.

A registry in the Shadcn sense is a manifest of components: for each entry, a name, a type, a list of dependencies, and a list of files with their paths and contents. The Shadcn command line tool reads a registry and installs the listed files into your project, resolving the dependencies as it goes. That is what makes the copy-and-paste model work at scale: a block is not a snippet on a web page, it is an installable unit.

So the site is not a gallery with a download button. It is a catalogue that the standard installer can consume, and the copy button on the page is presumably running that installer.

The generation step is the interesting design decision. There is a script that generates the registry from the repository, and a check mode for the same script. A check mode that runs in continuous integration is the standard way to keep a generated file in step with its source without relying on anybody to remember to regenerate it. The pair of commands, one that writes and one that only reports, is exactly the arrangement you want: the write is available to a maintainer, and the check is available to the pipeline.

The registry build then runs the Shadcn build command against each of the three registry files, writing into separate output directories for the Radix set, the base set, and the combined one. Three registries and three output directories means the site can offer the same block in two component flavours, and the separation keeps the two from colliding.

The two flavours are the practical difference between this site and the upstream one. A project built on the Radix primitives and a project built on the base components are different code bases with different imports, and a block that only works with one of them is half a block. Publishing both from one source tree, with the difference confined to the registry, is a reasonable way to keep that maintenance down.

The pages, and the documentation directory

The website structure section is short, and it describes two kinds of page.

The landing page showcases the most popular Shadcn UI components with examples and links to detailed pages. The component-specific pages are dedicated pages for individual components, featuring multiple variations and previews.

So the landing page is an index of the most requested blocks, and each block has its own page with several variations rather than one. That is the right shape for a component gallery, because the interesting question about a component is rarely whether you want it but which of its states you want: the empty form, the form with an error, the modal with a footer, the navigation with the second item active. Multiple variations per page answers that question, and the screenshot script in the manifest is the automation that keeps the previews current.

The repository layout supports the reading that this is a site with real content management rather than a static page. There is a source directory, a public directory with the built registry output in it, a scripts directory for the generation code, a tests directory, and a docs directory. There are three registry files at the top level and a components configuration file, which is the file the Shadcn tooling reads to know where your components live and how they are styled, and a generator script directory.

The tooling choices are worth noting because they are recent and they are consistent. The package manager is bun, pinned to a specific version, and the lock file is a bun lock file. The linter configuration is a Biome file with the comments extension enabled, and there is also an older ESLint configuration file, which is what a repository looks like after it has migrated and kept the old file. The tests run under Vitest, with a watch mode alongside. The editor configuration, the CI directory, and the contribution guide are the rest of the standard set.

And there are four directories of agent configuration at the top level, for different coding tools, along with a file listing the installed skills. For a project whose main output is code that a machine will copy, having the assistant configuration checked into the repository is a considered choice rather than an accident.

What you actually get, and what you own afterwards

The usage section is four steps, and reading them as a workflow explains the value proposition better than the feature list does.

Visit the site. Browse through the available blocks and examples. Preview the components and blocks to see how they look in action. Then copy the code snippet directly from the page and paste it into your project.

The last step is the one that deserves a paragraph, because it is where the ownership changes hands. A copied block is not a dependency, it is source code in your repository, and from that moment it is yours to maintain. That is the trade the whole Shadcn ecosystem is built on, and this site is a front end for it.

The benefit of the model is that there is no abstraction tax. The block uses the same components, the same styling conventions, and the same utility helpers as the rest of your application, so it looks and behaves like everything else because it is everything else. It can be edited in place, which is the point of a copy-and-paste model, and a project that needs a variant of a block can make it rather than filing an issue upstream.

The cost is equally clear, and it is the reason the site publishes blocks in more than one component flavour. The two Radix-based packages and the base package expose different primitives, so a block written against one is not a drop-in for a project on the other. And the number of dependencies a block pulls in varies, which is why the registry format has a dependency list per entry: the installer needs to know what to add to your manifest when it writes the files.

That last point is the one that a reader copying from a web page would miss, and a registry-driven site gets it right for free, because the dependency list travels with the entry rather than with the markup.

The contributing section is one sentence, and it says the useful thing: contributions are welcome, and if you have ideas for new blocks or improvements, you can reach out or fork the repository. A gallery of components grows by people submitting the blocks they built, which is a contribution model that scales with the number of users rather than with the number of maintainers.

Editorial conclusion

shadcn-ui-blocks fits a developer who wants to see a component working before deciding whether to use it, and who would rather copy a block that is known to look right than assemble one from a component library. It does not fit a project with a strict component policy, since the whole model is copying code into your own repository, and it does not fit a team that wants a maintained dependency rather than vendored source. Verify first which component set the block is built on, because the site carries more than one and the imports differ, that the registry you point the installer at matches the version of the components you already have, and that you read what the block brings with it, since a copied block is code you now maintain.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. akash3444/shadcn-ui-blocks on GitHub
2. Issues
3. License: MIT
4. Project website
5. README