Theme presets & fork-on-change
Two or three borrowed skins, switchable from the toolbar. Design is a costume, not a commitment.
Northstar ships three preset design systems — Ledger (Stripe-inspired light), Foundry (Linear-inspired dark), and Gazette (warm editorial serif) — as read-only token files — radii, shadow depth, type scale, spacing density — heavily inspired by existing good designs. A toolbar app switches them site-wide.
The moment you ask for a design change, the active preset is forked to
themes/custom.css and edited there. Presets stay pristine, “switch back”
always works, and your fork persists so you can return to it.
The purpose is anti-procrastination: three good borrowed skins signal that design is a costume, not a commitment — and keep you out of the gradient mines while the product idea is still forming.