The design system, running.
Every other page says I architect design systems. This one hands you the controls. Nothing below is a screenshot or a copied hex value — the specimens read their values out of the running stylesheet, so flip the theme in the nav and watch the numbers move.
Color
One token set, two palettes. The @theme block is the dark palette and the site’s default; light is a second declaration list, applied only when you ask for it. Values below are read live, not transcribed.
Surfaces
Everything a visitor reads on top of. Dark raises a surface by lightening it; light does the reverse, keeping white for the raised card and putting the page on a gray, so the ladder reads the same depth in either theme.
--color-background
—
--color-card
—
--color-muted
—
--color-input
—
Text
Foreground roles. Each one is paired with a surface in the contrast table below.
--color-foreground
—
--color-card-foreground
—
--color-muted-foreground
—
--color-accent-foreground
—
Lines and focus
Mostly alpha over the current surface, so they hold up on any background.
--color-border
—
--color-border-strong
—
--color-ring
—
Status
Success, warning and danger — added because /lab needed a failing row and had to reach outside the system for it. Each sits at the accent's lightness, so the semantic family shares one tonal band.
--color-success
—
--color-warning
—
--color-danger
—
Accent
One accent, two forms. The soft one is translucent in dark and opaque in light, because it lands on top of project screenshots.
--color-accent
—
--color-accent-soft
—
Brand ramp
A scale, not a theme — it does not flip between light and dark. .gradient-text just reads from a darker rung on light so the gradient stays visible against white.
50
100
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Contrast, measured
The accessibility claim on services is checkable. Each ratio is computed in your browser from the tokens as they are currently resolved — switch themes and every row recalculates.
| Pair | Sample | Ratio | WCAG |
|---|---|---|---|
| Body text on the page | Aa sample | — | |
| Body text on a card | Aa sample | — | |
| Secondary text on the page | Aa sample | — | |
| Secondary text on a card | Aa sample | — | |
| Secondary text on muted | Aa sample | — | |
| Accent text on the page | Aa sample | — | |
| Label on a primary button | Aa sample | — | |
| Success text on the page | Aa sample | — | |
| Warning text on the page | Aa sample | — | |
| Danger text on the page | Aa sample | — |
Type
Three roles, and a rule for each. The display face earns its keep by appearing once per heading, never twice.
Frontend developer crafting scalable interfaces
Geist. Every heading and every paragraph.
STATIC EXPORT · 0 SERVER PROCESSES
Geist Mono. Eyebrows, labels, metadata — anything that should read as data.
the work
Instrument Serif, italic only, and only on the accented word of a heading.
Radius and elevation
Two small scales. Cards use 2xl, controls use full, and the shadows exist mostly to separate a surface from the aurora behind it.
Button
Five variants, four sizes, one disabled state — the same cva config the rest of the site imports. Change the controls and copy what you get.
<Button variant="primary" size="md">
View my work
<ArrowUpRight />
</Button>The rest of the primitives
Radix underneath, tokens on top. Nothing here is hand-rolled accessibility — the dialog, tooltip and separator are all primitives with a class list.
The motion layer is deliberately absent from this page — it is CSS, not components, and it is documented where it lives. See the case study for why there is no animation library, and /uses for what this is all built with.