Accepted rfcs/accepted/rfc-patties-ui-theming.md

Theming — @theme inline wiring + base-color token presets

Accept the two buildable theming slices; the live editor is split out as deferred

Review verdict (2026-05-28)

Accept the two buildable theming slices; the live editor is split out as deferred ([[rfc-patties-ui-theme-editor]]).

Scope pins:

  • @theme inline wiring is the canonical Tailwind v4 mechanism (matrix had it "specced"). patties does not own app.css; the wiring is a snippet the CLI prints (via patties ui init), never auto-edits.
  • Base-color presets ship as alternate tokens.css payloads under patties-ui/templates/themes/ (e.g. neutral/slate/stone/zinc), selected at stamp time via --theme <name> (on add or ui init). No persisted baseColor config key — the preset is a one-time stamp choice the user then edits (consistent with the convention-over-config stance).
  • Dark mode stays divergent: .dark on <html>, zero JS theming dep, no next-themes — recorded, not changed here.

Encoded into ui/62-theming-presets.

Summary

Define the canonical Tailwind v4 @theme inline wiring snippet patties prints, and add stamp-time base-color token presets via --theme <name>.

Motivation

shadcn offers a base-color/preset system and documents @theme inline. patties shipped the default token set but had no preset choice and no canonical wiring doc.

Proposal

  • Ship templates/themes/<name>/tokens.css preset payloads; --theme <name> merges the chosen values via the existing idempotent token merge (tokens.ts).
  • patties ui init prints the @theme inline mapping for the shipped tokens.

Trade-offs

  • A preset is stamp-time only (not reconfigurable later) — but the user owns tokens.css and edits freely, so this matches copy-in.

Open questions

  • Shareable preset codes/URLs across projects → split to [[rfc-patties-ui-theme-editor]] (deferred).