Vision & goals
What Lumen is becoming — a documented, open-source design language; Halo is the reference app.
Evolve the Halo design system into a documented, open-source design language — Halo-first, community-second — modeled on shadcn/ui (distribution + ownership) and Material 3 (depth of guidance). Halo is the reference implementation; the language is the gift to the ecosystem.
Modeled on the best, plus the layer they lack
- shadcn/ui — distribution is copy-paste, you own the code: a registry + the standard CLI, "Open Code," MIT. Component pages read Preview · Installation · Usage · API.
- Material 3 — the guidance depth: Foundations · Styles · Components, each with specs, do/don't, accessibility, behavior.
- The Lumen addition — the expressive layer neither emphasizes: motion as meaning, the living identity, the biological material, tech ⊗ bio imagery.
The name
Lumen — Halosome Lumen, at lumen.halosome.com, npm scope @halosome/*. Concept-perfect
twice over: lumen = light (the light-from-within of the Solar inner sun) and the anatomical
lumen — the interior channel of a vessel. One word lands the optical + epithelial + light
concept. Always scoped under Halosome (the sweep found real collisions — Laravel Lumen, Ledger's
Lumen, a registered trademark); a real trademark check precedes any public launch, with
Irida / Iridis held as fallback. Internally coherent: the violet accent is "Iris," the material
register is "the Lumen," the optical/hero register is "Living Lens" — the language is Lumen.
The nine modules, and why this order
About → Foundations → Styles → Components → Blocks → Layouts → Content → Charts → Brand —
general → specific → expressive → brand. Blocks are composed UI sections; Layouts are
page/app scaffolds. Brand is the one Halo-proprietary module; the rest is OSS-able.
(Two additions since the plan: Labs — the sketchbook with provenance — and this
Language section.)
Distribution (the shadcn way)
Two artifacts: the docs/spec — the language (principles, tokens, guidance; open, CC-BY-ish)
— and the registry — the kit (components, tokens, blocks; MIT, copy-paste via
registry.json + the standard shadcn CLI). Tokens ship as CSS vars + a typed module, dual
truth machine-checked. Halo dogfoods everything; the product proves the language.
Where the roadmap stands
| Phase | Goal | State |
|---|---|---|
| P0–P1 | Lock the IA, the name, the manifesto; prototype the 9-module nav | ✓ done |
| P2 | Foundations/Styles substance — tonal ramps, tokens, motion | ✓ done (ramps AA-by-construction; the truth script gates CI) |
| P3 | The real docs site | ✓ done — this site (Fumadocs), static export |
| P4 | Component registry | Kit is broad (forms · surfaces · feedback · menus · pickers · blocks); registry.json is the open piece |
| P5 | Expressive + Charts | Charts live; Content pages live; the expressive layer keeps growing in Labs |
| P6 | OSS launch | Not started — license, CONTRIBUTING, the domain, llms.txt, announcement |
The standing carry
The language's biggest open goal is inside Halo itself: the product apps still theme off the neutral starter tokens. Adopting Lumen in the apps — the reference implementation actually wearing the language — is the next arc's decision.