name: tilde-style-overview description: tilde.style — what it is, why it exists, the Gardening/Bonfire styles, Katharina signal metadata: type: project #

AI-aware design toolkit for intentional personal and community web presence on the folk/tilde web. Inspired by impeccable.style. First style: Gardening, extracted from chatbot-garden. Second style: Bonfire, derived for this site itself via the /tilde-style init interview. Claude Code skill live at ~/.claude/skills/tilde-style/.

Why: The folk web is reviving (AT Protocol personal spaces, tilde servers, webrings, smallweb) but has no design toolkit. AI is reshaping design work but the tools don't surface authorship. tilde.style fills both gaps — users create their own design language via the language command rather than instantiate someone else's. AI is a design collaborator, not authority ("authorship as agency" from trespass.ing).

Bonfire style (this site, not Gardening):

• Palette: night #141210, spark #F5A623, fire #E8651A, ash #EDE8E2
• Vocabulary: hearth, ring, clearing, gathered, kindling, stones, embers, sparks
• Anti-patterns: corporate chrome, scale-first vocab, product launch aesthetics
• DESIGN.md + style.md at repo root document it in full

Katharina connection: the AI+UX research she shared (impeccable.style, folkjs, "the case against conversational interfaces", agent protocols) is the primary AI-awareness signal behind this project.

Files: README.md, toolkit.md, skill/, styles/gardening/, index.html, site.css, DESIGN.md, style.md at repo root.

How to apply: when asked to add a new style, use /tilde-style language — the metaphor must come from the person's own intention (see co-authorship policy in the beans, e.g. tilde.style-ts4c), not be invented solo. When asked to work on the toolkit itself, edit toolkit.md directly.