Authoring Nuxt Layers: Build a Custom Email Layer

Nuxt Layers are quickly becoming the go-to solution for Vue developers who want to create reusable, shareable functionality across multiple Nuxt applications. This course is your comprehensive guide to building production-ready Nuxt layers that solve real problems, using a complete email management system as our primary example.

Whether you're building internal tooling, open-source packages, or enterprise solutions, Nuxt Layers help you create modular, maintainable code that teams can share and extend—without reinventing the wheel.

What are Nuxt Layers?

Nuxt Layers are a powerful way to extend Nuxt applications by sharing components, composables, pages, server utilities, configuration and more across multiple projects. Think of them as shareable Nuxt applications that other Nuxt apps can extend and build upon.

Nuxt Layers offer:

• Complete code reusability across projects
• Intuitive layer development (no special module syntax, develop like a Nuxt app!)
• Seamless distribution via npm or github
• Domain-driven architecture

It's the perfect solution for developers who want to create once and reuse everywhere, while maintaining full flexibility and customization.

Why Take This Course?

This course start out teaching the basics of how layers work and when/why you might want to use them. This is only the beginning though. After learning the basics, we crack open a real world email layer and peak under the hood at:

• Creating provider-agnostic systems with runtime configuration
• Communicating across layers with hooks
• Integrating and bundling custom devtools in your layers
• Setting up a monorepo development workflow for layer projects
• Publishing and distributing layers for team or public use

You'll walk away with proven techniques and a complete email layer you can use in your own projects.

What You'll Learn

Understanding Nuxt Layers Architecture

We'll start by exploring the basics of a Nuxt layer: what’s possible, what the folder structure looks like, naming layers and importing modules from layers, and publishing layers to npm and github.

Building Provider-Agnostic Systems

After learning the basics, we review a robust email layer a way to dig deeper. Learn how to create flexible systems that work with multiple backends—like our email layer that seamlessly switches between Mailgun, Mailcatcher, and other providers through runtime configuration and factory patterns.

Vue-Based Email Templates

Discover how to build beautiful, responsive email templates using Vue components and the @vue-email/components library, with full props support, type safety, and reusable design patterns.

Server-Side Layer Architecture

Explore a practical example of how to share server utilities and API routes via layers. The useEmail() server-side utility, makes it easy to send emails in the end user app and the built-in development API endpoints power mailcatcher functionality.

Custom Devtools Integration

Learn to implement custom Nuxt DevTools panels that integrate seamlessly with your layer. In our email layer, I’ll show you how I created the mailcatcher UI that lets developers preview, send, and manage emails during development.

Monorepo Development Setup

Master the complete development workflow. I’ll show you how I used pnpm workspaces to manage everything about the layer in a single project: playground, documentation, and layer source code all in one place.

Runtime Configuration Management

Learn advanced configuration patterns using Nuxt's runtime config system to create layers that adapt to different environments and requirements without code changes. In the email layer, this manifests as a simple email provider config.

Testing and Quality Assurance

See how I implemented tests for the email layer and ensure your layer works reliably across different Nuxt applications.

Ready to Build Reusable Nuxt Solutions?

If you're looking to create maintainable, shareable solutions that scale across multiple Nuxt projects, this course is for you. By the end, you'll not only understand how to build sophisticated Nuxt layers—you'll have a complete toolkit for architecting reusable systems that solve real business problems.

Let's dive in and start building layers that teams love to use!