If you've lived more than one professional life, combine real book titles from both lives. I'll go first. A Sorrow Beyond Dreams: Laws of Software Engineering

Most design tokens hold a value. The interesting ones hold a rule. Instead of freezing a ramp and designing around it, let tokens choose, transform, and re-decide when inputs change. That makes dark mode and new themes less of a retrofit, and leaves more room for surprise.

Check out "The 1 Year Anniversary Edition", our first issue after switching to @offprint.app! three-and-three.com/a/3mkwa357mh...

And created/maintains the most promising design token manager out there.

we do need to be thinking a lot more deeply about the implications of replacing all of our prior language with machine generated facsimiles, i think

I’m an analog kind of person, but I also do computer stuff for a living, so I decided to merge the streams and build an app for my favourite non-work activities: #filmphotography and #darkroom printing. The result is Darkroom Toolkit. Check it out: www.darkroomtoolkit.com

Utopia.fyi but in your tokens indeed.

Excited to finally launch the Mindful Design Toolkit. A free collection of workshops, resources and files to help you with any stage of your design process. Completely open source, and available in open source formats. I’ll be adding to this consistently this year. mindfuldesign.xyz/toolkit/intro/

Asking for a friend… 👀 Anyone hiring for a Design Systems / Frontend Engineer right now? Strong in React, Typescript, AI, accessibility, and building scalable component libraries + developer platforms (8+ years). Would love to connect 🙏 #DesignSystems #Frontend

Damn, yall aren’t hiring him?? He’s our most valuable employee. Nobody else comes close.

1. sign up is now fully open (at least temporarily) 2. updated onboarding, ending was jarring 3. the user with the most quests in their backlog by next Friday gets squire free for 6 months squire.guide

I know it's totally unimpressive and all bots or whatever but that 1k still means a lot to me. Thanks to everyone who has shown interest in, or tried out, @sugarcube.sh so far. I'm working on some demos/educational material as well as a roadmap and some exciting new features at the moment.

Current* conditions near Elk Rapids, MI:

I didn't want to share this yet because it's still so rough, but given new specs are starting to show up, I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring: designsystemdocspec.org I'm working on a standard schema for design system documentation. I've been using it for my own work. It doesn't suck.

@bell.bz co-authored Every Layout with @heydonworks.com back in 2019. It transformed how developers approach layout in CSS and in this free lesson of Complete CSS, Andy gives even more detail in how skeletal layouts are the way to get a solid UI piccalilli.link/cc-free-less...

Seeing a lot of takes that seem to assume that if you remove Figma and design with code instead your problems go away. But code is only where the system runs, not where it magically appears.

This is an exceptional read and well worth your time. Matthias puts design tokens in the "better handoff tooling" bucket, which is fair. But that's precisely why I'm trying to move them into the "shared material" bucket instead. Shared material is basically *the* pitch/vision for sc.

Got sugarcube running in the browser because...well, it was fun. And also because it opens up a whole bunch of stuff I'm working on! (Excuse the self-congratulatory emojis - I was v excited. Would remove them and record the video again but I'm tired).

Created this small tool to explore the current system’s token tree to better understand how the relationships work between token groups → primitives tokens → semantic tokens → themes → UI modes. Has already helped us so much to improve the overall architecture and naming+grouping conventions.

The VIC Gov has approved destruction of rare snow gums on the summit of Mt Macedon so people can get a view of Melbourne. Take action here and help to #SaveMacedonSnowGums www.melbournefoe.org.au/save_mt_mace...

spent the weekend trying this out properly and convinced it's the best way to be building design system components right now. just enough abstraction. pairing elena with @sugarcube.sh for token-first workflows and i don't think i've enjoyed building ds foundations more than this.

You may think you're building a GUI for your code-first design system so you can more easily design in the browser but really its value is in the way it surfaces problems in your code. "Oh when I turned that knob I expected [x] style to change and it didn't. Why?" etc.

`tsnapi` - a snapshot testing utility for the public API for library maintainers. Snapshots for both JavaScript and TypeScript declarations. It would help prevent unintended breaking changes on public API signatures. Thanks @sxzz.dev for the initial idea and implementation. github.com/antfu/tsnapi

If you want truly responsive design that works for each and every weirdly sized viewport, you need to use fluid type and fluid space that responds to that viewport. Here's a free lesson from Complete CSS to explain why. piccalilli.link/cc-free-less...

I've been working on this piece for about a month now, about how publishing's woes are the same as the rest of the internet, and how we can find some hope in the new internet that's currently under construction. Now I have a shiny new @offprint.app blog, I can finally show it off.

I'm in love with @vite.dev's DevTools framework and I don't care who knows it.

Instead of painting easter eggs I'm painting a website.

Thanks for your support and contributions to the project, mate! Gonna stick this in the testimonials section when I get around to building one ha

Oh and more spec-friendly approach to fluid space & type, too.

I built a visual explainer of the CSS Cascade, the algorithm that determines the "winning value" from a list of competing declarations. It's built on work by @bram.us and @miriam.codes. cascade.arpit.codes I wrote about how it came together on my blog: arpit.blog/notes/2026/0...

If you're learning programming skills: Igalia is taking applications for a program paying you to work on open source 💰 Fully paid grant program 📆 450 hours of work with a mentor from June 📍Global remote program 🎓 Open to students or self-directed learners 🚨 Applications close April 3rd!

Cannot wait to build with this and learn from it. Can tell a lot of care and expertise has gone into it.

Weekend project: a minimal CV builder. Recruiters often only look the first page, so I added compact print styles.

Ah man @sugarcube.sh users giving me too many cool things to implement! Early adopters helping enormously.

maybe you don’t need that bot or that MCP server or that latest LLM model, maybe you just need to have a conversation with one (1) other human

Carcassonne.

Friday arvo here so experimenting with something delicious. Basically, utopia.fyi but in your tokens.

that's part of it. but there are also core aspects of the web (esp html & css) that were already too invisible: cross-browser/device support & a11y. It's not enough to care about "outcomes" when you think everyone has the same experience as you. Many care about craft **because of the outcomes**

Did you know you can help shape the direction of @sugarcube.sh? Think it's missing a vital feature? Open a feature request (or just ping me on here) like this lovely person did: github.com/sugarcube-sh...

This is partly why I've been so excited about building code-first infrastructure for design system work. The ultimate vision is to take it even further. Tools for both developers AND designers to work comfortably *within* that code-first infrastructure.

In 2012 I worked for a year on Reunion Island. I thought it would be so easy to return but freaking life isn't like that.

Judging on the Australian Web Awards this year: webawards.com.au I know I don't have a lot of Australian followers but there are some excellent studios doing excellent work down here. I'll post some of the winners once they're announced!

Just a reminder, we're knocking 20% off all courses throughout March. Use code NEXTLEVEL to save 20% and get some high quality education, written by humans *for* humans. PPP discounts also available. piccalil.li/courses

Trying a new app launcher just to feel something.

Absurd the amount of joy it gives me to hear that @sugarcube.sh is helping people. Thanks @finell.dev!

Log on to LinkedIn and the smackdown is brutal: learn AI or perish immediately! Work weekends and nights if you have to! Dear developers, I'm sorry but you're worthless now! Can we go back to when it was just me telling me I'm worthless?

Today, the bad news bear got me. My contract with Disney will be ending in April instead of June. I am actively looking for a Senior UX/Product Designer with full-time opportunities in healthcare, biotech, or ed-tech. I appreciate your support and connections. Thank you.💛 conniechen.design

And we just submitted a grant application! Love to see this kind of thing. Fund your local open source maintainer 🙏

Happy that I now get to share my favourite drug with everyone: building shit.