692: Killer Feature of Web Components, Skills > MCP, and Streaming HTML?

What It Covers

Dave and Chris explore Custom Elements Manifest for web components, debate MCP versus Skills for AI context management, discuss out-of-order HTML streaming proposals, and examine custom event architecture patterns in component systems.

Key Questions Answered

• •Custom Elements Manifest (CEM): Generates JSON documentation from web component classes that automatically powers Storybook, API docs, language servers, linters, React wrappers, and TypeScript definitions—eliminating weeks of manual developer experience tooling setup across component libraries.
• •MCP Context Limitations: Installing multiple Model Context Protocol servers chips away at LLM token budgets. Anthropic now recommends Skills—markdown files describing command-line tools per project—instead of universal MCP installations that bloat context windows and reduce agent effectiveness.
• •Custom Event Classes: Extend native Event classes directly rather than using CustomEvent with detail properties. This approach provides better TypeScript support, eliminates the mystery detail object, enables IDE autocomplete on event properties, and creates consistent event shapes across design systems.
• •Declarative HTML Streaming: New proposal enables out-of-order HTML patches using content-for and content-name attributes. Sections render immediately with loading states, then receive streamed updates without JavaScript, potentially unlocking HTML includes functionality while handling progressive enhancement and accessibility concerns at platform level.