> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/nuxt/nuxt/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# modules/

> Use the modules/ directory to automatically register local modules within your application.

It is a good place to place any local modules you develop while building your application.

The auto-registered files patterns are:

* `modules/*/index.ts`
* `modules/*.ts`

You don't need to add those local modules to your [`nuxt.config.ts`](/directory-structure/nuxt-config) separately.

<CodeGroup>
  ```ts modules/hello/index.ts theme={null}
  // `nuxt/kit` is a helper subpath import you can use when defining local modules
  // that means you do not need to add `@nuxt/kit` to your project's dependencies
  import { addComponentsDir, addServerHandler, createResolver, defineNuxtModule } from 'nuxt/kit'

  export default defineNuxtModule({
    meta: {
      name: 'hello',
    },
    setup () {
      const resolver = createResolver(import.meta.url)

      // Add an API route
      addServerHandler({
        route: '/api/hello',
        handler: resolver.resolve('./runtime/api-route'),
      })

      // Add components
      addComponentsDir({
        path: resolver.resolve('./runtime/app/components'),
        pathPrefix: true, // Prefix your exports to avoid conflicts with user code or other modules
      })
    },
  })
  ```

  ```ts modules/hello/runtime/api-route.ts theme={null}
  export default defineEventHandler(() => {
    return { hello: 'world' }
  })
  ```
</CodeGroup>

When starting Nuxt, the `hello` module will be registered and the `/api/hello` route will be available.

<Note>
  Note that all components, pages, composables and other files that would be normally placed in your `app/` directory need to be in `modules/your-module/runtime/app/`. This ensures they can be type-checked properly.
</Note>

Modules are executed in the following sequence:

* First, the modules defined in [`nuxt.config.ts`](/api/nuxt-config#modules-1) are loaded.
* Then, modules found in the `modules/` directory are executed, and they load in alphabetical order.

You can change the order of local module by adding a number to the front of each directory name:

```bash theme={null}
modules/
  1.first-module/
    index.ts
  2.second-module.ts
```