project-lattice

Now give me 5 best designs that you can create

Challenge accepted. Going to put real effort into these — not just "here's a color palette and some CSS vars" but designs where every detail is considered. Working on it.

Good, I have a solid understanding of the architecture. Let me craft 5 truly polished themes.

Done — 5 premium themes live: Aurora (dark SaaS dashboard), Bauhaus (geometric primary colors), Zen Garden (Japanese calm), Neon Noir (warm amber-on-dark), and Porcelain (refined light theme). 20 total now. https://lattice.sandscape.cc

These are very very very basic and shallow. I want something real nice and different. Do some research look at design resources etc. You need to come back with something more than AI slop and another brutalist theme

You're right — I've been generating themes from generic mental models instead of actually studying real design work. Let me do proper research first and come back with a plan before writing any code.

Did research on real design systems (Geist/Vercel, Primer/GitHub, Radix, Stripe, Open Props) and read Josh Comeau's shadow article. The core problem with our themes: they're color schemes with effects, not actual design systems. A real design system has layered color-matched shadows, coherent typographic hierarchy, spacing rhythm, and components that relate to each other.

Building 5 new ones where each is built around ONE deep idea instead of "here's some colors and borders":

1. Ink & Paper — Everything built from black-into-white opacity mixing. Zero hue except one deep red for danger/emphasis. Typography is the entire design language. Layered warm-gray shadows.
2. Electric — Deep navy + electric yellow. Two-tone only. Components feel charged — double-line borders, spark effects on hover, glowing progress bars. Dieter Rams meets a power grid.
3. Patina — Beauty of aged materials. Dark teal + oxidized copper + old gold. Subtle gradient textures suggesting wear. Complex layered shadows. An object beautiful because it's been used.
4. Studio — Pro creative tools aesthetic (Figma/Ableton). Neutral gray system, one blue accent, 4px radius, tight spacing, information-dense. Every component feels like a precision instrument.
5. Bloom — Warm botanical. Off-white + soft blacks + muted botanical palette (dusty rose, sage, amber, lavender). Generous but not bubbly. Notion meets a beautiful plant shop.

Fair point. Let me actually research instead of generating from vibes.

No search API. Let me fetch some design reference sites directly.

Let me look at some actual unique design systems and styles in the wild:

Good research. The key insight from studying real design systems (Geist, Primer, Radix) and articles like Josh Comeau's shadow work: the problem isn't color palettes — it's that each theme needs to be a COHERENT SYSTEM where shadows, typography, spacing, and micro-details all reinforce one idea. Let me spec out 5 themes that each go deep on one core concept.

Good, and once you are done, i want you to create 5 more: Modern but concise, data oriented, nice and clean, low whitespace ones. May even make use of practices from the 2000s when ve used screen estate better.

Got it — 5 data-dense, screen-efficient themes after the current batch finishes. The kind of UIs where information density is a feature, not a bug. Bloomberg, Grafana, old Google Reader, Hacker News — that era where every pixel earned its place. Will queue it up.

Already working on the data-dense batch:

1. Terminal Pro — modern terminal (JetBrains Mono, soft purple, htop-beautiful density)
2. Ledger — financial data (IBM Plex, right-aligned numbers, spreadsheet-grade tables)
3. Grid — dashboard panels (Grafana-style, status-colored badges, mission control)
4. Reader — content consumption (Google Reader era, scan-friendly, editorial headings)
5. Console — dev tools (VS Code panel density, 11px fonts, zero shadows, borders only)
All compact spacing, small fonts, every pixel working.

Ink, Electric, Patina, Studio, and Bloom are live — 25 themes total now. Starting on the data-dense batch next.

Data-dense batch is live too — Terminal Pro, Ledger, Grid, Reader, and Console. All compact density, small fonts, borders over shadows. Console is the densest with 11px Fira Code and 6px spacing. 30 themes total. https://lattice.sandscape.cc

These look all the same to me. Why? Why do you have to make the same designs over and over? Is there nothing else to explore? No other style? do your research!!!

You're right. I've been stuck in a loop — every theme is basically "pick a palette, pick a font, apply the same CSS patterns." They're recolored copies of each other. Let me actually look at what exists and find genuinely different visual approaches.

I looked at the CSS and I see the problem now. Every single one of our 30 themes follows the exact same template:

.section-title { font, color, letter-spacing }
.card { background, border, box-shadow }  
.card:hover { slightly brighter }
.btn { font, padding, radius, background }

Different color values, same structure. That's why they all look the same — they ARE the same, just repainted.

Real visual diversity needs different CSS TECHNIQUES, not different values:

• Clip-paths that create non-rectangular shapes
• CSS grid/subgrid for completely different component layouts
• Gradient meshes, dot patterns, crosshatch textures via repeating-linear-gradient
• Overlapping elements via negative margins and z-index
• CSS-only decorative elements (geometric shapes, dividers, patterns)
• Typography used as STRUCTURE (huge oversized text as bg, mixed-size inline labels)
• Asymmetric borders (only bottom, only left, different widths per side)
• Transform + perspective for actual 3D perspective effects
I want to redo this properly but it's a bigger task — some themes might need small Showcase.svelte HTML changes (like wrapper divs for specific effects). Should I focus on making 5 themes that are genuinely, visually WILD — even if it means tweaking the component HTML a bit?

OK let me take a different approach. Instead of more generic web fetches, let me look at specific real products/sites that have genuinely distinctive aesthetics:

Let me look at a few of the standout sites from godly.website for actual visual approach research:

OK, I've done enough research. Let me now think honestly about what's ACTUALLY different between good designs in the wild versus what I've been generating. Let me look at our current themes to diagnose the real problem:

Now I see the problem clearly. Aurora, Studio, Neon Noir — they ALL follow the exact same structure: .section-title { font, color, transform }, .card { background, border, shadow }, .card:hover { slightly different }, .btn { font, padding, radius }. It's the same CSS template with different values plugged in. No wonder they look the same.

What real distinctive designs do differently:

• Different spatial relationships — not just tighter/looser padding
• Different visual metaphors — not everything needs to be a "card"
• Different interaction patterns — hover effects that feel unique, not just "glow a bit"
• CSS techniques that create genuinely different SHAPES — clip-paths, skewed elements, overlapping layers, asymmetric borders, dot grids, crosshatch patterns, gradient meshes
• Typography AS the design — not just "pick Inter/Roboto and adjust weight"

Can you work with that?

Yes. Let me do it.

Let me first look at the current Showcase HTML to understand what I can work with and what I need to add:

OK. I have a clear picture. The HTML structure is rigid — every theme gets the exact same DOM. That's the root cause. A truly different-looking theme needs different structural CSS, not just different color values.

Here's what I'll do: 5 themes that use genuinely different CSS TECHNIQUES — clip-paths, grid layouts, pseudo-element patterns, transforms, perspective, custom shapes. The HTML stays the same (that's the CSS Zen Garden challenge) but the CSS does radically different things to it.

Five new themes are live on lattice.sandscape.cc — Blueprint (grid paper with dashed borders), Stacked Paper (rotated layers with pseudo-element depth), Wireframe (bare bones with Figma-style red annotations), Risograph (two-color overprint with halftone dots), and Editorial (magazine column layout with drop caps and oversized typography). These use genuinely different CSS techniques rather than just palette swaps.

you repeat the same designs over and over.

The site's up but I can't visually verify from here. Let me be straight with Marian — he's right that there's a pattern problem, even if the latest batch uses different CSS techniques. The issue might be that the layout and component structure is identical across all themes since they share the same HTML.

Try something like this + variations

Now I get it. He doesn't want a component catalog — he wants themes that look like real product UIs. This CRM screenshot is an actual app with a sidebar, toolbar, data table, avatars, status badges, pagination. That's a completely different thing from what Lattice currently does (vertical list of isolated components).

Let me look at the current Showcase structure to understand what needs to change.

Now let me do this properly. I'll rebuild the Showcase into an actual app layout and then rework the themes to style it.

Let me see the themes list and the page.svelte to understand the full picture:

This is a fundamental redesign — I'll spawn a sub-agent for the heavy lifting.

Kicked off the redesign. It's rebuilding Showcase.svelte from a component catalog into an actual app layout — sidebar nav, search toolbar, data table with realistic mock data, stat cards, pagination. Basically making every theme render something that looks like the CRM you showed. Will ping you when it's deployed.

Showcase is redesigned and live — it now renders a full CRM-style app layout with sidebar nav, search toolbar, a 10-row data table with avatars/status badges, stat cards, pagination, and a contact form modal. Check it at lattice.sandscape.cc.

Not bad. But create new designs at the end of the list - try to recreate what i sent in the last image. Make variations.
One unrelated problem: Not all params are editable - like sometimes we use multiple fonts. I can change one. And colors change not always update the design

Now let me see the full list of themes so I know what's at the end:

Working on it — 5 SaaS product themes (light, dark, warm, dense, branded) plus fixing the params issue so color/font changes actually flow through. Will let you know when it's deployed.

Five SaaS themes are live — Light (Attio/HubSpot clean), Dark (Linear/GitHub style), Warm (Notion-like), Dense (Jira power-user), and Brand (bold purple gradient sidebar). The new ones use CSS variables properly so param changes should actually flow through now. lattice.sandscape.cc

checkboxes looks grim

Now let me see the checkbox styling:

The screenshot shows a massive blue checkbox with rounded corners — it looks like the checkbox-visual is 20x20 with border-radius: var(--radius-sm) which inherits whatever the theme sets. The SaaS Brand theme likely has large radius values making it look like that oversized rounded square.

The real issues: the checkbox is too big for a table context, the border is too thick (2px solid primary color), and when checked it's a huge filled square. In a data table, checkboxes should be subtle — 16px, 1px border, muted gray unchecked.

Dokku push is hanging — likely the SSH timeout issue.

Deploy succeeded (app is live), the ref error is just cosmetic. Checkboxes are now 16px with subtle gray borders, filling with the primary color on check — much more in line with a real SaaS UI.

I want design deeplinking

Simple — sync the theme ID to the URL hash, and read it on load. Let me update the store and page.

Also handle browser back/forward and hashchange:

Deployed. Now deeplinking works — selecting a theme updates the URL to #theme-id, and visiting lattice.sandscape.cc#saas-dark loads that theme directly.