UI & Design
UI & Design tools are for building UI components and design systems — the kind of work every indie hacker eventually hits and would rather not build from scratch. 6 tools are listed here, each picked and written up individually rather than pulled from an affiliate feed. Ant Design is usually the first one people try: the go-to for admin panels and internal dashboards — dense tables and forms out of the box, at the cost of looking like one. Mantine takes a different angle — a newer, hooks-first component library with better defaults and fewer footguns than most — an indie-hacker favorite for solo builds. And MUI is worth a look too: the old reliable of React component libraries — batteries-included Material Design components for shipping a finished-looking app fast. Every listing below includes the actual tradeoff, not marketing copy, so you can pick based on what you're building instead of what ranks highest in a sponsored roundup elsewhere.
The go-to for admin panels and internal dashboards — dense tables and forms out of the box, at the cost of looking like one.
A newer, hooks-first component library with better defaults and fewer footguns than most — an indie-hacker favorite for solo builds.
The old reliable of React component libraries — batteries-included Material Design components for shipping a finished-looking app fast.
Unstyled, accessible component primitives quietly powering shadcn/ui and a good chunk of the polished apps you use every day.
You don't npm install it — you copy the code into your repo and own it, which is why it became the default start for new React UIs.
Build and test UI components in isolation before wiring them into your app, so broken states and visual regressions get caught early.