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salt-theme-gen — Design System Theme Engine

Creator & Sole Developer

An open-source OKLCH-based theme generator that takes one hex color and produces a complete light/dark design system with 21 semantic colors, 32 interactive states, and WCAG accessibility reports.

Problem

Building accessible, consistent color systems is tedious and error-prone. Developers manually derive dozens of color tokens with no guarantee of perceptual consistency or accessibility compliance.

What I Built

  • Automated derivation of 21 semantic colors from a single hex input using the Butterfly Rule
  • 32 interactive state generation (hover, active, disabled, focus for 8 intents)
  • 18-entry WCAG accessibility report baked into the generation pipeline
  • Triadic, complementary, split-complementary, tetradic, and monochromatic harmony options
  • 20 nature-inspired presets with perceptual lightness compensation
  • Light and dark mode output from one source color

Outcome

  • Published on npm as salt-theme-gen
  • Zero runtime dependencies, pure TypeScript
  • Featured on DEV Community
  • Powers this very website’s theme system

Why It Matters

Color science, design systems thinking, and open-source engineering in one package. A single hex color in — a mathematically derived, WCAG-compliant design system out. The kind of tool that only gets built by someone who understands both the math and the product.