Comparison
Windcraft vs Storybook
Storybook renders your components in isolation so people can build, test, and browse them. That is genuinely useful and not what Windcraft does. Windcraft describes components to machines — the contracts your AI tools read — and checks that the app code actually stays on your tokens.
Storybook is for humans: a visual workshop where you develop a component, exercise its states, and document it. Windcraft is for machines: it hands your AI tools the component contract and tokens to generate against, and runs a static analyzer over the resulting app code. Storybook shows you the component in a vacuum; Windcraft keeps the pages that use it from drifting. They sit at different points in the workflow, which is why teams run both.
How they compare
| Aspect | Storybook | Windcraft |
|---|---|---|
| Primary audience | Humans browsing and testing components | AI tools generating code, plus the analyzer |
| What it captures | Rendered states, controls, written docs | Machine-readable contracts, tokens, patterns |
| Enforcement on app code | None — it is a separate workshop | Static analyzer flags drift in your real pages |
| New AI-written pages | Unaddressed — Storybook never sees them | Checked against the system as they are written |
When Storybook is the right call
Storybook wins whenever a person needs to see a component: building one in isolation, exercising edge-case states, running interaction or accessibility tests, or giving the team a browsable catalog. Windcraft does none of that and is not trying to. Run Storybook for component development and human documentation; run Windcraft so the AI-generated pages assembling those components stay on one design language.
FAQ
- Is Windcraft a Storybook replacement?
- No. Storybook renders and documents components for people; Windcraft describes them for AI and enforces tokens in your app code. They solve different problems and are commonly used together.
- Does Windcraft render my components?
- No. It is not a viewer. A Windcraft contract is machine-readable — variants, sizes, slots, rules — meant for AI tools and the analyzer to read, not a visual gallery for humans. Keep Storybook for the visual side.
- Can I use both?
- Yes, and it is the natural setup. Storybook for building and documenting components; Windcraft for keeping the pages that use them coherent, especially when AI is writing those pages.