Your approach is correct, and you're not missing anything. The autocapture functionality in PostHog is designed to be conservative to prevent capturing sensitive data(1). It captures clicks on specific HTML elements, including a tags, but it doesn't automatically capture clicks on child elements(1).

When you use the CSS selector .link[href="/hello-world"], it will only capture clicks directly on the <a> element itself, not on its child elements like <span> or <svg>(1)(2).

To capture clicks on all parts of your link, including the text and icon, your approach of creating a custom action with multiple match groups is the correct way to do it(1)(2). This allows you to capture clicks on the link itself as well as its child elements.

Here's how you can set up your action:

1. Create a new action(1)
2. Add a match group for the link itself: .link[href="/hello-world"](2)
3. Add another match group for the text: .link__text(2)
4. Add a third match group for the icon: .link__icon(2)

This setup will ensure that clicks on any part of your link are captured as a single action(1)(2).

If you want to simplify your selector, you could consider adding a specific data attribute to your link for tracking purposes, like this:

<a class="link" href="/hello-world" data-ph-capture-link>
    <span class="link__text">Label text</span>
    <svg class="link__icon"...</svg>
</a>

Then, you could use a single selector in your action: [data-ph-capture-link](2). This would capture clicks on the link and all its children.

Remember, actions are retroactive, so this will apply to past events as well(1).