Marquee owner's guide
Everything from the download to your own palette, read from the files this theme ships.
- 1.4.2
- version
- 7
- pages
- 34
- components
- 67 × 2 modes
- tokens
- 4
- workflows
unzip marquee-1.4.2.zip
cd marquee-1.4.2
bun install
bun devThe download is a complete Next.js project, not a folder of snippets. It carries 7 routes, the token file, 34 components and the agent kit.
See the priceInstall
Three ways in: the zip, the shadcn registry, or your agent over MCP.
The artifact is versioned and immutable, so the file you get is marquee-1.4.2.zip. Unzip it, run the four commands above, and the site is on localhost:3000.
The link arrives with your license, and stays valid for every future version.
Every theme is a registry item the real shadcn CLI installs. Files land under src/tailthemes/marquee/, mirroring the tree below.
Marquee is paid, so the request has to carry your license key. Put it in TAILTHEMES_LICENSE_KEY in your .env.local, then add this to components.json. The CLI expands the variable and sends the key as a header, so it never enters a URL.
{
"registries": {
"@tailthemes": {
"url": "https://tailthemes.com/r/{name}.json",
"headers": {
"Authorization": "Bearer ${TAILTHEMES_LICENSE_KEY}"
}
}
}
}bunx shadcn add @tailthemes/marqueeAn all-access key works on every slug. A single-theme key works on the theme it was bought for.
A registry item is JSON, so image assets cannot travel with it. Themes that import images need the zip as well.
Point any MCP client at https://tailthemes.com/api/mcp and your agent can read the manifest, both token tables and AGENTS.md before it touches a file.
the four toolsWhat unzips
One directory, laid out the way you would lay it out yourself.
every file
Three of these do the work: src/theme.css holds every design decision, AGENTS.md is the contract your agent reads first, and .claude/skills/ holds the 4 workflows it can run.
Screenshots are not in the download. They are generated by the publish pipeline and live on the listing, not in your project.
Using it
Every page is a plain component, and the tokens are scoped to one class.
- /Recur — subscription analytics9 sections
- /productProduct — wire, match, close5 sections
- /integrationsIntegrations: sources reconciled5 sections
- /pricingPricing — one meter, MRR tracked4 sections
- /customersCustomers — closes with names on them5 sections
- /signupStart free — the first match3 sections
- /componentsComponents18 sections
Tokens are declared on .tt-marquee as well as :root, so an install cannot repaint components you already have. Wrap the page in <div className="tt-marquee"> and everything inside picks them up.
Dark mode is a dark class on <html>. There is no second stylesheet and no dark: utility in the components.
The HTML edition
The same site again, with no framework under it.
Everything under html/ is a second, independently authored edition of the theme. html/dist/ is 7 compiled routes with local fonts and vanilla JavaScript — copy it to any static host and it is live, with no build step and no Node on the server. html/src/ is the Nunjucks source those routes compile from.
bun run build:html recompiles html/dist/ after you change the source or the tokens. bun run preview:html serves the compiled edition locally. Both ship in the download's package.json, backed by the two files in scripts/.
One token file drives both editions, so a rebrand made in src/theme.css reaches the HTML edition the next time you run the build — dist/ carries compiled CSS and never updates by itself.
The two editions are kept in step by the publish gate: every route in the manifest must have a compiled counterpart before a version ships, so the 7 pages you saw above exist in both.
Making it yours
Tokens are the API: change the values, never the names.
- Edit the values. All 67 tokens live in src/theme.css, in a light block and a dark one. Nothing in src/components/ carries a colour.
- Watch it land. Open /components. The styleguide reads every swatch, type step and radius live, so you see what the change did to the whole system at once.
- Re-check contrast. Run the check-quality workflow. The palette ships verified to WCAG AA in both modes and a rebrand should keep it there.
- .claude/skills/add-page
One file in src/app/<slug>.tsx, default-exporting a plain component. Pages are pure composition: import sections, stack them, pass content-selecting props.
- .claude/skills/add-section
One file in src/components/<name>.tsx, exporting one PascalCase component. It may import from ./ui/* and lucide-react, and nothing else — no other section, no page.
- .claude/skills/check-quality
Eleven checks, all mechanical. Run in order; stop at the first failure.
- .claude/skills/rebrand
Every visual decision lives in src/theme.css. A rebrand edits token values there — never token names, never components.
Those summaries are the files' own opening lines. They are written against this repo, so where one names themes/marquee/ your copy has the project root instead.
For your agent
The theme brought its own rules, so nothing has to be reverse-engineered.
AGENTS.md is 455 lines of invariants, the file map, the type and spacing scale, and what never to touch. It opens like this.
# AGENTS.md — Marquee
Rules for any agent (or human) editing this theme. They are not style
suggestions; the publish gate and the extension skills in `.claude/skills/`
assume them.
## The four declarations
| | |
|---|---|
| **Signature** | **The ticker rail** — a full-bleed, hairline-bounded strip of mono, timestamped, figure-bearing events drifting edge to edge between sections: the marquee the theme is named for. Three tellings on three routes, each a different feed with a different job: `/` (the wire — revenue events), `/product` (the match log), `/customers` (the go-lives). `/pricing` and `/signup` carry none: a price and a form have no event stream, and a rail added for texture is decoration. "A scrolling strip" is not the signature — every 2026 portfolio has one; *the product's evidence rendered as a feed, agreeing with the spine table*, is. A new route earns a rail only if it has a genuine event stream to publish. |
| **Sanctioned deviation** | **The rail's text moves.** motion-pass bans animating text while it is read; the rails animate caption-size mono horizontally. Bought with: the whole ambient budget is spent here (one rail per route, nothing else moves continuously), caption-size mono only — never body copy, never headings — a 90s loop (`--duration-ticker`: a drift, not a scroll), a persistent labelled **Pause** switch in the feed cell that keyboard and touch can reach (a native checkbox with `role="switch"`; the track reads it through `group-has-checked:`, so it is server-rendered and needs no script), pause on hover and on focus, and a fully readable static row under `prefers-reduced-motion` (the animation is `motion-safe:` at the call site; the switch is hidden there because nothing moves). Exactly one deviation — do not add a second. Dark-first is NOT a deviation here: the catalog's canvas-band ledger makes [0.00–0.20] a sanctioned band and directed this theme into it. |
| **Register** | **Declarative-loud** (content-pass). H1s are 1–3 word fragments at display size ("Revenue, reconciled." · "Wire. Match. Close." · "Priced by MRR."); the deck carries the idea; body sentences short and period-heavy. Second person for the reader; the fiction's voice is confident, never hype — the banned-vocabulary list binds in full. |
| **Motion personality** | **One moving part.** The marquee drift is the only continuous motion in the theme. Micro feedback 150ms `ease-out` on hover/press; disclosures and the mode glyph swap are instant or ≤240ms; **no entrances, no scroll effects, ever**. Reduced motion is authored in, not retrofitted. |The kit is plain markdown, so the work continues on your machine and your own account. Nothing calls back here.