Add-ons

Carbon add-ons contain components, tools, and guidance that extend Carbon for a specific product or experience. Add-ons enable teams to create their own custom patterns and components that follow Carbon’s visual style and guidelines.

If your team is using Carbon and needs components specific to your product or industry, you should create a Carbon add-on.

If you feel that your components and/or patterns could be used in other products, we encourage you to contribute your work back to Carbon.

The Carbon Design System is an open-source project and we encourage teams using Carbon Design System to stay open-source as well. If your product has privacy constraints, there are options for creating an add-on repo under our GitHub Enterprise account.

Add-ons are generally easier to contribute to because they are not fully managed by the Carbon team. For your add-on to be accepted, your components must meet WCAG AA standards and include interaction states (hover, active, focus, and disabled).

If you build an add-on repo, it’s your responsibility to maintain it. This involves carrying over changes from the core Carbon repo, as well as making sure it is using the latest major version of Carbon.