UserTourKit

Overview:

Tour Kit is a headless React library for building product tours, onboarding flows, hints, checklists, in-app announcements, and microsurveys. It ships as 12 composable packages, is TypeScript-first, and WCAG 2.1 AA compliant. Designed natively for shadcn/ui, it works with any component library. It is intended for developers who want to embed these user experience primitives directly into their application code, as an alternative to hosted SaaS tools like Pendo or Userpilot. The core packages are MIT-licensed and free, with commercial packages for additional features.

Core Features:

• Headless core: The @tour-kit/core package provides framework-agnostic hooks, types, a position engine, and storage adapters, allowing developers full control over the UI markup.

• TypeScript-first: The library is built with strict TypeScript, offering full type inference and no any types in the public API.

• Accessible by default: Components include focus traps, ARIA live regions, keyboard navigation, and support for prefers-reduced-motion, aiming for WCAG 2.1 AA compliance.

• Tree-shakeable packages: Every package has sideEffects: false and ships ESM, CJS, and .d.ts files, allowing for minimal bundle sizes.

• Route awareness and framework adapters: The library includes adapters for Next.js (App Router and Pages Router), React Router (v6 and v7), and works out of the box with Vite and plain React.

Use Cases:

• SaaS onboarding: Guide new users through a setup process with a tour, then provide a persistent checklist on the dashboard.

• Feature launches: Announce new features using modals, banners, or other announcement variants with scheduled display rules.

• Adoption nudges: Detect users who haven't used a key feature and trigger contextual hints or beacons to guide them.

• Feedback loops: Fire a microsurvey (e.g., NPS) after a specific number of sessions, using built-in fatigue prevention to avoid spamming users.

Why It Matters:

Tour Kit provides a code-owned, open-source alternative to hosted SaaS platforms like Pendo or Appcues for in-app guidance. Its headless, composable architecture gives developers full control over the UI and data flow without vendor lock-in. The MIT-licensed core packages allow teams to use essential features like tours, hints, and the core engine for free, while the commercial packages offer more advanced capabilities. The library's native compatibility with shadcn/ui makes it a natural fit for projects already using that design system.