Nested components: text properties not editable in parent instance

Hi everyone,
I’m struggling with a nested component setup and I’d like to understand if this is a limitation of Figma or if I’m structuring things the wrong way.
I’m designing an e-commerce filter panel. The structure is:

1. Item (component)
2. • contains a text layer exposed as a Text property
   • has hover / active states
3. Dropdown (component)
4. • contains multiple Item instances
   • has open / closed variants
5. Category (component)
6. • contains multiple Dropdown instances
   • categories are expandable / collapsible


When I place the category instance in my design then try to edit the item labels I cannot change the text of the items
because they always stay linked to the Dropdown main component, even if the Item itself has a text property, it’s not editable from the Category child.

It seems that text properties inside nested components don’t “pass through” to higher-level instances.
I need to avoid creating a separate parent component for every filter category.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!