Skip to content

No.85 · Cards

Feature Trio

Three cards that explain a product by doing it: each card holds a tiny working piece of the UI — a build log, a live latency line, a firewall counter — that wakes up when you point at it.

The prompt

Written for the variant you picked above: Frost

Build a three-card feature section for a developer platform where each card demonstrates its feature with a miniature piece of working UI instead of an icon. The cards share one rounded container and are separated by 1px gaps over a hairline background (the gaps are the dividers). Each card: a 152px dark 'screen' at the top, then a mono index, an Instrument Serif title and a short muted paragraph. - Ship from a push: a build log whose lines complete in sequence — waiting lines faint, the running line bright with a blinking accent dot, finished lines with green dots, ending on 'Ready · 41s'. - See it as it runs: a live latency sparkline (40 points, random walk with occasional spikes) with its area tint and the current p95 in tabular mono. - Safe by default: small red requests fall onto an accent 'edge' line and burst there, while a 'Blocked today' counter climbs. At rest every demo idles at a quarter speed. Pointing at (or focusing) a card makes its demo run at full speed and raises its accent ring and glow, while the other two demos dim to 50%. One column below 44rem. Selected variant — Frost: accent="#b9cce4" (frost blue) for running dots, the sparkline, the edge line and the active ring.

Notes

Interaction
Hover or focus a card to run its demo at full speed; the others quieten.
Motion
Demos tick on intervals (full speed when active, 4× slower at rest); card background and demo ring transition 400ms.
Accessibility
Cards are links with real headings text; demos are decorative (aria-hidden). Focus behaves like hover. Reduced motion freezes the demos in a representative state.
Responsive
Container query stacks the cards below 44rem.
On touch
Tapping a card activates it; demos idle otherwise.

Featured

01Glassbreak ButtonA solid plate that fractures from one impact point, cracks racing outward as the shards drift apart.04Liquid GlassA capsule of glass that bends what's behind it, carries a specular highlight around its rim toward your pointer, and squashes like a drop of liquid when pressed.07Phosphor Glass ButtonA liquid-glass pill that senses you coming: its rim light turns to face the cursor and the pill leans in to meet it.08Iris ShutterAn async button with a camera iris for a status light — blades close and turn while it works, then open onto the result.
81Atmosphere CardSmoked-glass link cards: colour pooled in the corners, slow contour currents underneath, a field that leans toward you.93Eclipse Event CardAn editorial event plate with an oversized date and an orbital eclipse bleeding in from the right, alive with slow drift.94Specimen CardAn object mounted under glass: hover lifts the pane with a sweep of reflection and swings out a paper catalogue tag.
95Silk FieldDomain-warped light that pours like liquid silk, with an optional glass lens that refracts the flow under your cursor.106IsobarA living weather map — contour lines traced over a drifting pressure field, with your cursor as a system of its own.
151Prompt ComposerA chat composer where attached files tuck into its top edge like tabs in a folder — they rise from behind it when added and sink back when removed. Send turns into stop while the reply streams.157Aura FieldA writing field where colour only exists while the AI is touching your text: the edge becomes a turning band of light and the words are rewritten in place, one by one, out of a soft blur.
205Halftone CTAA tall CTA banner where slow gold paint drifts beneath a fixed halftone grid, visible only through the dots.
212Nocturne Sign-inA single quiet column on near-black with a breathing seam of frost light behind it — email, password, magic link, nothing more.222Sigil Sign-inA split sign-in whose left half grows a geometric mark from your email — the same address always draws the same sigil.
275Voices CarouselA testimonial exhibition: one large quote at a time on frosted glass, crossfading between voices without ever resizing.
279Feral TitleA brutal condensed wordmark — heartbeat in the dark, letters slam in, a gash tears through and the word bleeds.
301 components