Living Color — v2 Thesis & Competitor Decomp

Thesis

A palette is a point in OKLCH × N-roles vector space. Static themes are frozen points. A "living" palette is a path through that space — chameleons and cephalopod chromatophores do not pick a color, they animate along a trajectory while preserving constraints (visibility, contrast, biological viability).

The v1 engine derives one point. The v2 engine animates between points while continuously enforcing the same constraints (WCAG, role schemas, palette algebra) per frame.

Vector-space framing

• Palette = vector [L₁,C₁,h₁, L₂,C₂,h₂, …] (3·N dimensions for N roles).
• Animation = parameterized curve t → palette(t) from t=0 to t=1.
• Easings: linear, cubic-bezier, spring, chromatic-detour (path through a 3rd point — warm→cool transitions that visit green, not brown).
• Hue wraparound: shortest-arc by default; hueDirection: 'cw' | 'ccw' | 'shortest'.
• Per-frame enforce:contrast (cheap — full derivation < 5 ms). Constraints survive the morph.

This unlocks palette algebra:

Operation	Meaning
lerp(a, b, 0.3)	30 % toward palette b from a
a − b	per-role OKLCH delta vector
nearest(a, corpus)	closest preset to a custom palette (perceptual NN)
drift(current, derived) > θ	"user adjusted accent past tolerance — re-derive?"
perpendicular(a, axis)	move orthogonally in chroma plane while keeping L/h

Architecture implications

A second engine layer — Animator (or livingPalette) — consumes the same Engine per tick. New plugin candidates fall out:

Plugin	Role
iridis-anima	interpolation tasks, easings, scheduler hooks (RAF in browser, setTimeout in Node)
iridis-pulse	reactive bindings: time-of-day, audio FFT, scroll, focus, ambient light, weather sensors
iridis-fsm	XState-style palette state machine (mood: calm → focused → alert → resolved)
iridis-trajectory	curated paths through palette space — sunrise, lava-lamp, bioluminescence, polar-aurora

Reactive signals likely live behind a plugin contract, NOT in core's PipelineContext — keeps core platform-free. To be re-decided once we measure the friction.

Naming — proposal

Brand: iridis

Latin/Greek for rainbow. Six characters, evocative, NPM-clean, fits the workspace's Mechanicus/mystical aesthetic (auspex, fabricator, archivum, grimoire, magos), telegraphs "color" without being literal. Short enough that prefix-naming the plugins reads well.

v1 packages

Package	Folder	Role
@studnicky/iridis	packages/core	core engine
@studnicky/iridis-cli	packages/cli	runner
@studnicky/iridis-vscode	packages/vscode	VS Code theme generator
@studnicky/iridis-stylesheet	packages/stylesheet	CSS variable emitter
@studnicky/iridis-tailwind	packages/tailwind	Tailwind theme
@studnicky/iridis-image	packages/image	image-pixel intake → palette extraction
@studnicky/iridis-contrast	packages/contrast	WCAG / APCA / CVD contrast enforcement
@studnicky/iridis-capacitor	packages/capacitor	Capacitor native chrome (StatusBar, Splash)
@studnicky/iridis-rdf	packages/rdf	RDF graph emitter (Turtle, TriG, N-Quads, JSON-LD)

v2 packages (post-v1)

Proposed	Role
@studnicky/iridis-anima	animation / interpolation engine
@studnicky/iridis-pulse	reactive signal bindings
@studnicky/iridis-fsm	palette state machine
@studnicky/iridis-trajectory	curated palette paths
@studnicky/iridis-algebra	palette math (lerp, delta, nearest, perpendicular)

Naming rules going forward

• Body word names the function literally. No poetic Latin. (-image not -imago, -contrast not -aegis, -rdf not -codex.)
• Platform plugins keep platform names (-vscode, -capacitor, -tailwind) — clarity beats poetry where the platform IS the brand.
• Latin-leaning Mechanicus aesthetic where natural; never forced.
• NPM-clean: lowercase, single hyphen between brand and body.

Rename strategy

The in-flight workspace conversion uses literal @studnicky/iridis-* names. Rename pass before first publish: search-replace at workspace root, update exports maps, update the CLI's enable* flag → package-name resolver, update example imports. Trivial because nothing has shipped to the registry yet.

Competitor decomp — survey list

After v1 lands, write a decomp.md per major competitor. Categories:

Static palette generators

Coolors · Adobe Color · Khroma · Huetone · uicolors.app · tints.dev · Realtime Colors · Color Hunt · Paletton · Material Theme Builder · Stylify Me · Themer (mattvague).

Token systems / design-system color libs

Radix Colors · Open Props · Tailwind default palette · Primer Prism (GitHub) · USWDS color tokens · IBM Carbon · Atlassian Design Tokens · Polaris (Shopify) · Bootstrap theming · Mantine theme · Chakra UI tokens.

Dynamic / OS-level

Material You / HCT (Google) · Apple Dynamic Colors · Windows Accent System · KDE Plasma color schemes · GNOME accent colors.

Tools (perceptual)

Leonardo (Adobe) · Huetone · Polychrom (Figma) · Themer · Color Tools (Stripe) · Atelier · Theme Studio for VS Code · Primer Theme Builder · Wildlight (existing prior art).

Color libraries (math)

Culori · Color.js (Lea Verou) · Chroma.js · TinyColor · Okhsl/Oklab reference impls (Björn Ottosson) · d3-color · ColorTranslator.

Image-driven palettes

Vibrant.js / node-vibrant · ColorThief · Pictaculous · image-palette · Smart Crop palette extraction.

Animation / motion-color

Framer Motion color interpolation · GSAP color plugin · Lottie color overrides · Rive runtime palettes · CSS Houdini Properties & Values API.

Accessibility

APCA / SAPC (Myndex) · Stark · Contrast Ratio (Lea Verou) · Polypane · WAVE · axe-core color checks.

Research / academic

Brettel-Viénot CVD · MIT Colorgorical · Adobe research on perceptually uniform palettes · Microsoft IEUM · NASA Ames color-vision deficiency studies.

What to extract from each

Per competitor, capture:

1. Color model / math foundation
2. Role / token taxonomy (if any)
3. Plugin or extension surface
4. Accessibility story
5. Animation story
6. What's worth lifting; what's a deliberate counter-decision

White space

None of the surveyed projects treat palettes as animatable, contrast-enforced, plugin-composed vectors. Material You comes closest with HCT-based dynamic color but is locked to Google's tonal-palette model and not pluggable. Culori and Color.js give us math; nobody composes math + roles + contrast + animation + reasoning + reactive signals into one engine.

That's the v2 wedge.

Action items (deferred until v1 lands)

• [ ] Spike iridis-anima against the existing engine — measure per-tick budget for 60 fps role morphing on a 12-role schema.
• [ ] Survey each competitor above; produce docs/decomp/<name>.md per entry.
• [ ] Define the palette-algebra API (lerp, delta, nearest, perpendicular).
• [ ] Decide whether reactive signals belong in core's PipelineContext or stay in a plugin layer.
• [ ] Rename workspace packages from @studnicky/iridis-* to @studnicky/iridis-* before first publish.