Docs: Fix essentials addon references

[jonniebigodes]

Closes #

What I did

• Adjusted some snippets to address some references to the Essentials addon

Checklist for Contributors

Testing

The changes in this PR are covered in the following automated tests:

• stories
• unit tests
• integration tests
• end-to-end tests

Manual testing

This section is mandatory for all contributions. If you believe no manual test is necessary, please state so explicitly. Thanks!

Documentation

• Add or update documentation reflecting your changes
• If you are deprecating/removing a feature, make sure to update
  MIGRATION.MD

Checklist for Maintainers

• When this PR is ready for testing, make sure to add ci:normal, ci:merged or ci:daily GH label to it to run a specific set of sandboxes. The particular set of sandboxes can be found in code/lib/cli-storybook/src/sandbox-templates.ts

• Make sure this PR contains one of the labels below:

  Available labels

  • bug: Internal changes that fixes incorrect behavior.
  • maintenance: User-facing maintenance tasks.
  • dependencies: Upgrading (sometimes downgrading) dependencies.
  • build: Internal-facing build tooling & test updates. Will not show up in release changelog.
  • cleanup: Minor cleanup style change. Will not show up in release changelog.
  • documentation: Documentation only changes. Will not show up in release changelog.
  • feature request: Introducing a new feature.
  • BREAKING CHANGE: Changes that break compatibility in some way with current major version.
  • other: Changes that don't fit in the above categories.

🦋 Canary release

This PR does not have a canary release associated. You can request a canary release of this pull request by mentioning the @storybookjs/core team here.

core team members can create a canary release here or locally with gh workflow run --repo storybookjs/storybook canary-release-pr.yml --field pr=<PR_NUMBER>

Greptile Summary

This PR performs a systematic documentation cleanup to fix terminology inconsistencies around Storybook's essentials features. The changes update references from addon-specific language (like "Actions addon", "Controls addon", "backgrounds addon") to more accurate terminology ("Actions panel", "Controls", "backgrounds feature") throughout 13 documentation files.

The changes reflect Storybook's architectural evolution where essential functionality like Actions, Controls, and backgrounds have been consolidated from separate addons into core features. This aligns with the migration work shown in the codebase context, where @storybook/addon-essentials components are being moved into Storybook's core through the remove-essentials.ts migration.

The updates include:

• Converting "Actions addon" references to "Actions panel" or "Actions feature"
• Changing "Controls addon" to "Controls" or "Controls panel"
• Updating "backgrounds addon" to "backgrounds feature"
• Improving link formatting and navigation by adding proper markdown links
• Removing conditional language like "If you have the actions addon" since these features are now always available

All changes are purely documentation updates with no functional code modifications. The terminology updates make the documentation more accurate to the current Storybook architecture and improve user understanding by clarifying what comes built-in versus what requires separate installation.

Confidence score: 5/5

• This PR is extremely safe to merge with no risk of breaking functionality
• Score reflects that these are purely documentation terminology updates with no code changes
• No files require special attention - all changes are straightforward text replacements

[greptile-apps]

_{13 files reviewed, no comments}

_{Edit Code Review Bot Settings | Greptile}

[nx-cloud]

View your CI Pipeline Execution ↗ for commit db20b91

Command	Status	Duration	Result
nx run-many -t build --parallel=3	✅ Succeeded	1m 12s	View ↗

---

☁️ Nx Cloud last updated this comment at 2025-08-08 11:22:36 UTC