What we believe.
Seven principles, signed in pencil. They decide what makes it into the registry and what gets quietly deleted on a Sunday. If they ever grow longer than a page, something has gone wrong.
Principles
- I
Source you can read is a feature.
Components are not packages. They ship into your repo, on your branch, on your terms. If you can't read it on a small screen with one hand, it doesn't belong here.
- II
Surprise is a cost. Charge it sparingly.
Default props should land where you'd reach without thinking. Names should mean what they read. The fewer 'wait, why?' moments per component, the more time you have to build something interesting on top.
- III
Keyboards aren't a feature flag.
Focus rings, ARIA, motion-reduction, and color contrast are baked in before the first commit, not bolted on before the first complaint. If you can't navigate it with Tab, it isn't done.
- IV
Animation is grammar, not garnish.
Every transition explains a state change. Easing curves are chosen, not defaulted. If a motion can't be turned off cleanly with prefers-reduced-motion, it doesn't ship.
- V
The honest test of a component.
If you can't replace a piece of tent ui with thirty lines of your own on a Saturday morning, it's grown into something it shouldn't be. Smallness is a feature; it makes refactors cheap and forks unscary.
- VI
Build in the open or don't bother.
Every component is a PR you could have written. Every bug is one we ship the fix for, not a slack channel only paying customers can see. The roadmap is in git history; the changelog is the truth.
- VII
One good thing a week beats five rushed ones.
We'd rather ship a single component that's polished than a release train of half-built ones. Speed is a side-effect of caring; the calendar is not the boss of the craft.