Techniques for component-based software engineering, and more particularly, to techniques for enhancing component based development systems by making components self-aware with respect to the applications that they may be consumed in or other peer components within the applications. An exemplary technique includes determining an addition of one or more components to an interface of an application; identifying an asset definition within metadata of a component of the one or more components added to the interface of the application, where the asset definition provides self-wiring or self-configuring instructions for an asset that needs to be created for the component within a predefined scope when the component is added to the interface; and creating the asset for the component based on the asset definition.