0010. The site's visual layer adds no component library
Edit on GitHubThe diagrams, steps and overview the docs needed are built from what the site already bundled, and nothing was added to the lockfile.
- Status: accepted
- Date: 01/10/2026; it refines 0005
Context
The site rendered the markdown faithfully and stopped there. A note like network is a long run of sections, each about one arrow of a topology the reader had to assemble alone, and the home was a table. The request was a visual layer in the style of a developer portal: diagrams, flows, steps, an overview, and charts.
Decision
Build it from the three pieces already in the bundle, and add nothing:
| Need | Built from | Instead of |
|---|---|---|
| diagrams and flows | Mermaid fences in docs/, themed from the Fumadocs preset's own tokens | a second renderer such as beautiful-mermaid |
| a procedure | Fumadocs' remarkSteps, over the numbered headings of guides/ | a Steps component written into the markdown |
| an overview | Fumadocs' Card and buttonVariants, filled from the page tree | shadcn/ui, copied in through components.json |
| icons | lucide-react, which Fumadocs UI already depends on | a second icon set |
shadcn/ui lost for the reason site gave on 23/09/2026, which still holds: Fumadocs UI already brings every piece of the docs shell, and a second component library is maintenance bought for nothing. Recharts (through shadcn's Chart) and the Fumadocs Graph View were NOT adopted either, and that is a deferral, not a verdict: no page has a number to chart yet, and the graph was not measured. Both were reasoned about, not tried.
Consequences
- The lockfile did not move, so rule 13 and the fetch hash held with no work.
- Every diagram is a fence in
docs/, so GitHub draws it too, and nothing visual lives in JSX. - MEASURED on 01/10/2026 against the build before it: the JS a page loads up front grew by 0.3 KiB gzipped (370.6 to 370.9), and a page's HTML by about 2.3 KB gzipped, the sidebar's icons.
- The trigger to revisit: a page with quantitative data worth a chart (the
/statsthattools/repo-statsrenders is the candidate), or a measured Graph View that stays readable at 114 pages.