Seminar owner's guide
Everything from the download to your own palette, read from the files this theme ships.
- 1.4.2
- version
- 7
- pages
- 39
- components
- 73 × 2 modes
- tokens
- 4
- workflows
unzip seminar-1.4.2.zip
cd seminar-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, 39 components and the agent kit.
Download the zipInstall
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 seminar-1.4.2.zip. Unzip it, run the four commands above, and the site is on localhost:3000.
It is free: no account, no key, no checkout.
Every theme is a registry item the real shadcn CLI installs. Files land under src/tailthemes/seminar/, mirroring the tree below.
bunx shadcn add https://tailthemes.com/r/seminar.jsonA 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.
- /Fieldnote: practice the real thing8 sections
- /coursesCourses: choose your studio4 sections
- /courseService systems in practice6 sections
- /lessonLesson 03: test the failure3 sections
- /studioLearner studio: continue your work1 sections
- /mentorsMentors: meet your critics5 sections
- /componentsComponents13 sections
Tokens are declared on .tt-seminar as well as :root, so an install cannot repaint components you already have. Wrap the page in <div className="tt-seminar"> 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 73 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
1. Create a plain src/app/<slug>.tsx server component.
- .claude/skills/add-section
1. Create one src/components/<name>.tsx file.
- .claude/skills/check-quality
Run from the repository root. Stop on the first failure.
- .claude/skills/rebrand
1. Edit values only in src/theme.css; keep token names and all three scope blocks.
Those summaries are the files' own opening lines. They are written against this repo, so where one names themes/seminar/ 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 254 lines of invariants, the file map, the type and spacing scale, and what never to touch. It opens like this.
# AGENTS.md — Seminar
This file binds every change to Seminar. Read it before editing the theme.
## Declarations
| Axis | Decision |
| -------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Signature | **The learning trail:** a canonical Wire Diagram evidence fork built from square milestone nodes, mentor handoff cards, connector rails, and a repair loop. It appears on `/`, `/course`, `/lesson`, and `/studio`. |
| Sanctioned deviation | Trail milestones stay square. Every other container uses the 12px outer / 8px inner radius language. |
| Register | Imperative. Short action-led headings; concrete lessons, durations, artifacts, and handoffs. |
| Motion | Studious. 150ms color feedback, 2px directional icon nudges, and a 45deg disclosure turn only. Use `motion-safe`; no entrances or ambient animation. Reduced motion leaves every state complete. |
| Display | Instrument Sans, for direct headings with broad apertures. |
| Text | Karla, for readable instructions and critique notes. |
| Mono | Spline Sans Mono, for indexes, duration, status, and schedule metadata. |
## File map
- `src/theme.css` — every color, font, type size, line height, tracking value, and radius.
- `src/fonts.ts` + `src/fonts/` — the three self-hosted variable faces and their OFL files.
- `src/components/ui/` — shared primitives only.
- `src/components/ui/progress.tsx` — the completion rail. Segmented and never continuous, because every quantity this fiction knows is a count of named things; no indeterminate state, because the motion personality forbids the animation one would need.
- `src/components/ui/badge.tsx` — the whole badge family in one file: `Eyebrow`, the presentational `Status`, and `StatusBadge`, which carries a verdict and therefore always ships a glyph and a word.
- `src/components/ui/avatar.tsx` — the initials square, `aria-hidden` because the name is always printed beside it.
- `src/components/ui/field.tsx` — the one form vocabulary: `Field`, `Input`, `Textarea`, `FileInput` and `fieldClasses`. The studio's attachment control and critique reply consume it; `/components` shows every state.
- `src/fixtures/fieldnote.ts` — canonical product facts, UTC sample clock, learner state, permissions, submissions, critique, and selectors.
- `src/assets/learning-trail.wire.json` — canonical Wire Diagram topology and static teaching copy; typed course state joins it from `src/fixtures/fieldnote.ts`.
- `src/components/` — one independent section per file.
- `src/app/` — pure page compositions.
- `src/app/components.tsx` — the living styleguide and screenshot inventory.
- `html/html.json` — the HTML edition's route table and the asset copies it pulls from `src/assets/` and `src/fonts/`.
- `html/src/` — the HTML edition's Nunjucks templates, CSS and `js/main.js`; `html/dist/` is its generated output.
- `.claude/skills/` — sanctioned extension workflows.
## Invariants
1. Components use semantic color utilities only. Hex, palette classes, `text-white`, and alpha color states are bugs.
2. Font sizes come from `ui/type.ts`; no bare `text-sm`, `text-xl`, or other stock size class.
3. Light and dark differences route through tokens. `dark:` and `light:` variants are forbidden.
4. Sections do not import other sections. They may import `ui/*` and named Lucide icons.The kit is plain markdown, so the work continues on your machine and your own account. Nothing calls back here.