Every color, component, and interaction on this site — in one place.
A live inventory rendered from the same components the pages use. Toggle the theme in the header — every element here is light/dark friendly. Tokens are shown by their CSS variable name.
Color
Semantic tokens. Components never reference raw values.
active theme
stage layer
What the playground paints with. Each one is an alias onto the active theme, so a prototype asks for --stage and gets whichever ground the site is wearing. This is how the theme reaches inside a prototype instead of stopping at its edge.
all themes · light · dark · blue · red · green
Highlight
The highlighter is hijacked per theme. Selecting text lays down that theme's marker instead of the browser default.
Select any part of this paragraph and it paints in the active theme’s marker — and a run wrapped in mark uses the same pair, so a deliberate highlight and a dragged selection read as one gesture.
one marker per theme · light → neon · dark → orange · blue → pink · red → yellow · green → sky
Selection on the light theme looks exactly like this.
Selection on the dark theme looks exactly like this.
Selection on the blue theme looks exactly like this.
Selection on the red theme looks exactly like this.
Selection on the green theme looks exactly like this.
Radius
Rounded corners across the system — 6px on buttons, cards, and tiles; 4px on tags and small chrome.
Signal / LED
The recurring indicator motif. Flat dots, optional opacity pulse, no glow.
- green
- cyan
- amber
- red
- violet
- muted
one color per state · the label always names the light
- a case study that went live
- a playground piece you can drive now
- a build still in progress
- a collection of past prototypes
Typography
Inter for headings and titles; JetBrains Mono for body, meta, and UI. Tight tracking, uppercase meta.
The layer between systems and people.
Thread — AI workflow builder
Reviewed production code, not handoffs. Body copy runs at a comfortable measure with relaxed leading for reading.
the ramp
Five sizes, and nothing between them. The site previously carried eight ad-hoc values set inline — 9, 9.5, 10, 10.5, 11, 12, 12.5 and 15px — with no name and nothing to check a new component against. The two smallest are named tokens because Tailwind’s own scale starts at 12px; the rest are its defaults.
- text-micro
- 10px
- Tags, swatch keys, tile index
- text-meta
- 11px
- text-xs
- 12px
- Tile descriptions, dense body
- text-sm
- 14px
- Body copy, buttons, nav
- text-base
- 16px
- Lede paragraphs
Focus
One treatment per layer. A two-step ring: the ground first, then the ring color, so it reads on any surface without an offset guess.
- .focus-ring for site chrome, .focus-ring-stage for anything painting on a prototype stage. Nothing else. There used to be three treatments chosen per component.
- A ring of the ground color, then a ring of --ring outside it. The gap is drawn rather than offset, so it reads the same on a card, a page, and a colored stage.
- outline: none only ever appears together with the replacement ring, so a keyboard user is never left without one.
- Anything that opts out still gets the global :focus-visible outline. The floor is never nothing.
Scramble
The site's one text interaction. A word jumbles its letters into an alternate on hover, and jumbles back on the way out.
I'm Ahmed, a product designer working in the layer between complex systems and the people using them.
- The first word is home. It renders on the server, and every hover returns to it — the sentence never drifts from what it says at rest.
- In shows the next alternate in the set, out jumbles back. A word with several alternates reveals a new one every time.
- Nothing marks the word. No underline, no color shift, no cursor change — it is found by moving across it.
- Sized to the longest word in the set and held there, so a shorter word can never pull the copy behind it up a line.
- No hover to leave, so a tap steps through the whole set instead — the resting word included.
- The word swaps in place with no churn. Same content, no animation.
- The churning letters are aria-hidden; a stable copy of the settled word sits alongside them.
Button
Restyled shadcn primitive. Borders over fills; motion in the hover.
Card
Flat panel, hairline border, backdrop blur.
Tile
The one surface for every link and card, in three layouts. Restrained hover — the surface settles a shade darker, nothing moves.
Interactive Link Tile
The whole surface is a link. On hover the border and panel settle a shade darker — no lift, no shimmer.
Non-Interactive Tile
Same surface without an href — used for read-only information.
Tile with Children
Tiles accept arbitrary content below the description.
- React
- TypeScript
- Canvas
Case Studies
Every case study, taken from problem to shipped interface.
Placeholder Media
Without an image the panel renders as a flat accent block, so a tile never waits on artwork.
The Director's Cut
A creative review tool for filmmakers. Co-founded with an Emmy-winning director, designed and built solo, front end through backend.
- Video
- Notes
- Annotations
- Filmmakers
- Frontend
- Backend
Banner, No Link
The strip runs edge to edge; padding moves to the text column. Tags pin to the bottom so a row of tiles lines up.
- Tailwind
- Tokens
Prototype bar
The one line of chrome above a playground route. Back to the index, the piece's number and title, its description behind the info toggle, the version switcher, status, the walk to the next piece, and the theme.
A prototype route has no intro page: you land in the piece and this bar carries everything the page around it used to. It stays 44px, so the stage keeps the viewport. Anything that belongs to the frame rather than the piece — restarting an embedded prototype, switching versions — lives here, which leaves the stage clear for prototypes that arrive with chrome of their own.
Stage
The surface a prototype runs on. Full-bleed, painted in stage tokens, with the panel top-right and the readout bottom-left — the same two places on every piece.
Live components, bounded to a box instead of the viewport. Hairline corner ticks mark the field like a registration target; a prototype that brings its own interface turns them off. Below sm the panel becomes a bottom sheet and the readout moves to the top, so the two never stack.
Controls
One slider, one select, one chip, one group — labeled like lab equipment, painted in stage tokens. A prototype that needs a new kind of control adds it here first.
- Slider — label left, live readout right, hairline track. The one styled range on the site.
- Select — for a choice between named states: a mode, an edge rule, a specimen.
- Chip — off is a hairline outline, on fills with the accent. Pass
pressedfor a toggle, omit it for an action. - Group — a titled section behind a hairline, for presets and output actions.
Playground
Self-contained experiments, each on its own route — and you land straight in the piece, no detail page in between.
Thread AI Playground
The design exploration behind the AI workflow builder — the node canvas, function registry, worker states, and more.
Pattern Weaver
A loom for woven marks. Paint a 9×9 unit, animate it frame by frame, tile it into repeats and mosaics, then export SVG, animated SVG, or canvas JS.