8 ms·
Show HN: Performative-UI – A react component library of design tropes
hope you enjoy
- merveceylan 3mo agoAs a designer I've thought a lot about why these tropes spread, they're all basically an "I belong to the club" signal. But once everyone wears the same costume, the costume stops meaning anything. This nails that.
- echoforgex 3mo ago[dead]
- jrflo 3mo agoThat ascii lava lamp effect is low key really cool
- carlos-menezes 3mo agoLags the hell out of my browser (Safari) window though.
- tyleo 3mo agoYeah probably my favorite of the bunch too. I bet there’s a fun project to do to make a customizer for that.
- replwoacause 3mo agoNot sure what's low key about it but I agree that it's cool
- staminade 3mo agoVery funny. Although ironic that this whole library was built with AI.
- tfitz237 3mo agoThese all look very professional for (basically) a parody library
- Boxxed 3mo ago...which might just show how predictable and similar all janky startup pages are.
- NuclearPM 3mo agoJanky?
- csomar 3mo agoWhat are the odds some companies end up using it for a real product?
- eranation 3mo ago100%
- scottyah 3mo agoHonestly I can just swap these bad boys in and ship in less than a couple hours if it'd be funny enough. I don't think they're bad designs at all, and I don't think every aspect of my business needs to be unique and obsessed over. IMO this is like judging landscaping companies for all using similar looking shovels.
- visha1v 3mo agothe distance b/w satire and SaaS is approx one quarter
- sgt 3mo agoWhat are the odds of LLM's being trained on this and picking it up as best practice?
- sv123 3mo agoDefinitely bookmarking for future ideas and inspiration, don't care if I'm shamed for it.
- MisterKent 3mo agoNow I can produce slop without AI.
- sph 3mo agoWhy would you do that, when you can make shit nobody needs 10x faster with AI
- hyperhello 3mo agoThe author should have AI set up a simple deployment to EC2 and Azure and make an endless series of semantically meaningless AI companies with web sites and submit them everywhere. The web sites should also do this themselves.
- igurss 3mo agoNice UI quality
- erdaltoprak 3mo agoIt's very fun and way too polished, thanks!
- imafish 3mo agoI heard you like AI slop...
- wg0 3mo agoMan... That's satire on a whole another level. What a technical and deep sense of humor.
- punkbit 3mo agoSpot on "AI Native".
- ajpaulson 3mo agoLmao!!! Awesome
- smhanov 3mo agoIt needs a purple gradient mode.
- padolsey 3mo agoThe most extreme virtue-signal is to go completely browser-default and have no styling whatsoever. Like lowercasing because your pinky can't be arsed to reach for the shift-key even though you've a billion dollars in series A.
- Waterluvian 3mo agoNetscape knows best.
- ghurtado 3mo agoGive me Navigator or give me death
- MrBuddyCasino 3mo agoArray language proponents also like to do this. In their case I‘ll allow it, it matches the substance.
- arboles 3mo agoCan you link to a genuine example?
- MrBuddyCasino 3mo agoMinimalist example: https://kona.github.io/ https://kona.github.io/ Extremely Minimalist example: https://k.nyc/ https://k.nyc/
- arboles 3mo agoIn the pages you linked there's not much writing to really get a taste (https://k.nyc https://k.nyc responds with an unclosed <div> containing the letter k, come on), but I found some language examples in * https://codeberg.org/growler/k/pulls/ https://codeberg.org/growler/k/pulls/ * https://codeberg.org/growler/k/issues https://codeberg.org/growler/k/issues User @growler writes in succinct sentences and uses only periods. I'm having fun with the idea, in my head, that using array languages changes how you speak and write. HN commenters have also pointed out the peculiar way ngn/k writes C: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31362512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31362512
- jtbayly 3mo agoI could see actually using this…
- Brajeshwar 3mo agoMany a true word is spoken in jest.
- yosef123 3mo agoThis needs an additional subscriptions service tier, that's even more performative and even more AI
- cmrdporcupine 3mo agoNGL I'm going to steal/borrow/leach all sorts of these for my product. When in Rome!
- kardianos 3mo agoSavage and accurate. 100%.
- marknutter 3mo agoYawn. This is just bootstrap all over again. So what if people who don't have design skills can now create pleasant looking websites?
- ghurtado 3mo agoThe thing about humor is that you don't have to tell people when you don't get a joke, you can just quietly continue to live your life while you wait for your next chance to be temporarily happy.
- marknutter 3mo agoI get the joke, and I do appreciate it. I shouldn't have been so flippant in my comment, I was more just pushing back on people who disparage others for using ai to create websites.
- avaer 3mo agoI've worked on several projects where people looked at the site, which was simple and straight to the point, and people would straight up tell me they didn't take it seriously because it didn't have these performative UI things on it. It's like when a Youtuber's audience complains about how they're constantly asking you to subscribe. The reason it happens is because the statistics say it works.
- epolanski 3mo agoSame for clickbait thumbnails, people hate them, and yet don't really click on non clickbaity ones.
- thewebguyd 3mo agoIn the marketing world this is called revealed preference. This stuff is A/B tested to death. Anyone trying to sell something is best served by watching people's behavior instead of listening to what they say, as the two are often different if not polar opposites.
- 4chandaily 3mo agoThe perspective marketing world seems toxic. From the perspective of the "consumer", it sure does feel like we are being "ignored", "tricked", or "bamboozled" when our stated preferences are ignored in favor of "revealed preference". It isn't that we have a "preference" for these things, it is far more likely that a user just doesn't have their guard up 100% of the time, and these psychological manipulations are designed to cut through that. Sure, these strategies probably net clicks, but they aren't from people who "chose" your product, they are clicks from people who were manipulated into clicking. I suppose whether you think that is okay depends on your industry and ethics.
- thewebguyd 3mo agoYeah, it is highly toxic. I'd assume that in most cases those "revealed preferences" are specifically engineered, not organic. It's taking advantage of biological reflexes and calling it a true preference.
- utopiah 3mo agoNeat, opened an issue there for a finicky bit of code that'd help me quite a bit. /s
- rirze 3mo agoI love it https://github.com/vorpus/performativeUI/issues/2#issuecomment-4651102819 https://github.com/vorpus/performativeUI/issues/2#issuecomme...
- eranation 3mo agoMy Claude feels personally attacked.
- grassfedgeek 3mo agoAdding github link for those who want to use it (I do): https://github.com/vorpus/performativeUI https://github.com/vorpus/performativeUI
- lizhang 3mo agowait my readme isnt performative enough yet, let me add a chart showing the star history
- consumer451 3mo agolol. Genuinely curious, what is your reaction to so much "actually, this is great and useful" feedback?
- lizhang 3mo agothis gives me great motivation to take on even more story points next sprint!
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- Terretta 3mo ago“TokenStream – Server-sent events (SSE) were added to the HTML5 spec in 2008 but never used until 2025.” I remember chunked transfer encoding shipped in 1997. It's been possible since then to readily and easily stream bytes of text or chunks of html the way everyone sees LLMs do today. I used this to write a web based telnet client in 1997, and later a text moo / chat for the web. In both cases used a frameset so your line to send was at bottom of screen, the incoming lines were server-sent as things happened server side, and scrolled the client as new lines came in. There were other things you could abuse before that, but less reliable. But yeah, talk about things nobody used....
- ChiperSoft 3mo agoCOMET was so far ahead of its time. Sierra Online used it for their webchat in 1995 and it was absolutely the best webchat out there for years
- wuliwong 3mo agoI get the whole trope thing and maybe I'm just an old man but I still am kinda impressed when Claude sh*ts out this type of UI 100 times faster than I ever could. It might also be that I never could have made UI even of this quality before AI. (˶ˆᗜˆ˵)
- kfarr 3mo agoSome of these are actually nice and appropriate to use in certain contexts. Also this issue is hilarious: https://github.com/vorpus/performativeUI/issues/2 https://github.com/vorpus/performativeUI/issues/2
- aogaili 3mo agoIt's still better than the sh*t developers produced three years ago. Some people just like to feel superior by shaming others' work. You can easily tweak the visual output if you want to, but it's good enough for most use cases and better than what developers used to produce. So, it's progress.
- chrisra 3mo agoAgreed. I enjoy looking at and using a lot of these components.
- CarlitosHighway 3mo agoWhy so angry?
- aogaili 3mo agoAnd who are you my therapist? Just argue the point, this is not group therapy forum. Passive-aggressive people are the angriest/nastiest people around.
- CarlitosHighway 3mo agoWhat gave you the idea I wanted to "therapy" you?
- lizhang 3mo agono more stars please, we are at a funny number
- kachoio 3mo agopretty decent, may even use some of the components eventually. star given
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- butz 3mo agoDickover is suspiciously missing. How will I ask visitors to subscribe to my newsletter?
- jdw64 3mo agoCoooooooooool!!!!
- prplfsh 3mo agoI love how this is both hilarious and extremely well made. Great job! And I'm gonna be honest, I kind of want to use a few of these components for real (the ASCII art is fantastic).
- reactordev 3mo agoI was going to say that too. Some of these I definitely am guilty of. I have a few dozen that aren't on the list but it's a breath of fresh air to see it so well organized even though, we all know what it is :D fantastic job to the author(s).
- lizhang 3mo agoplease share your few dozen components
- reactordev 3mo agoWhy? They are silly gimmicks. You can easily prompt this. Claude: “In react, make a full screen component that renders pixel squares that fade in and accumulate over a page component, taken as a target prop.” Stupid crap like that. What’s cool is for those fullscreen tutorials or app walkthroughs, this works REALLY well to highlight the box on screen.
- apsurd 3mo agoor they can just prompt you for help.
- reassess_blind 3mo agoThe death of development, ladies and gentlemen.
- reactordev 3mo agodon't be so gloom. code that's more difficult than a zero-shot is worthy of sharing.
- Lupara 3mo ago[flagged]
- iishanto 3mo agoStarred this, my next project is going to be classified as slop anyway.
- jdw64 3mo agoThe funny thing is, the techniques shown here are the ones that were once considered something only advanced front-end developers or publishers could do. Seeing that a former symbol of skill has now become a subject of satire makes me think that what we call 'high-level' ultimately comes from what others can't do. I personally never even thought about how to implement ASCII art animation.
- kidfiji 3mo agoIt's less about "can't do" and more about creativity :)
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- jdw64 3mo agoWell, yes.
- arboles 3mo agoYeah, it used to function as proof-of-work but then the market was flooded with cheap printed circuits that trivialized the workload
- wbobeirne 3mo agoAs someone who used to pride myself on being able to make complex graphical designs a reality, it has definitely put me into a little bit of an identity crisis. But ultimately I think it just pushes you to find the things that are still hard for AIs, which in turn continues to differentiate your work from what everyone can now generate. Feels similar to the move away from realism to impressionism as the camera became available.
- manoDev 3mo agoSuch is everything: at first, painstakingly crafted; later, mass produced.
- 3mo ago
- darepublic 3mo agoSlick and self aware. Looks good
- julik 3mo agoThat is absolutely delightful
- pushMiau 3mo ago[dead]
- ChiperSoft 3mo agoOh wow, it uses normal css, how delightful! https://github.com/vorpus/performativeUI/blob/main/src/styles.css https://github.com/vorpus/performativeUI/blob/main/src/style...
- tomaytotomato 3mo agoWhen Agentic browsers become the norm, surely we will go back to the days of super plain HTML pages?
- zaptrem 3mo agoNeeds more WebGL spinning rubik's cube
- cubano 3mo agoWell...what about a <BLINK> as well? For gramps.
- guybedo 3mo agoit's obviously a satire and that makes me feel bad because some components are actually cool and i'd like to use them ...
- onesingleblast 3mo ago[dead]
- andrewstuart 3mo agoI’m interested but cannot be bothered doing 60 clicks trying to see it all.
- lizhang 3mo agoyou can now use square brackets [] to navigate between components •ᴗ•
- andrewstuart 3mo agoCan you show them all on the front page?
- hypfer 3mo agoThis is like building nerve agents for funsies. I am torn between respect and terror.
- drob518 3mo agoI’m totally triggered, but in the most ironic way. Or something like that.
- gkfasdfasdf 3mo agoThe lib is a joke I know, but these will absolutely get your prototype greenlit.
- lizhang 3mo agoif it helps you raise a series A please send me a little caesars hot n ready
- the__alchemist 3mo agoWow, Blazing fast! Does this use Fiber?
- winddude 3mo agoneeds something for showing and copying simple terminal commands.
- loh 3mo agoActually quite good for a meme library! Unironically considering using some of this, or pulling some inspiration from it at least. Also, I'm curious as to when the animated gradient text started being a popular thing. I started doing it back in 2021 or so. I think I was inspired by some of Apple's webpages at the time.
- starkgoose 3mo agoI find it funny that a website showcasing pretty preformative ui and yet fails so miserably at functional ui where it's painful to be used mobile
- alehlopeh 3mo agoI love the research. Those 6 files plus a 2 sentence prompt were probably enough for Claude to one-shot the entire library. https://github.com/vorpus/performativeUI/blob/main/research/ https://github.com/vorpus/performativeUI/blob/main/research/
- elwell 3mo agoThe animated graph nodes background is obligatory for token sale marketing sites during 2017/18 ICO boom https://vorpus.github.io/performativeUI/#/components/node-graph https://vorpus.github.io/performativeUI/#/components/node-gr...
- lloydatkinson 3mo agoI assume this is where charlatan companies like Vercel get their UI from
- inopinatus 3mo agoI don’t understand why the obnoxious popover didn’t automatically manifest when I scrolled its own doco. Needs more IntersectionObserver. Bonus points if the component props thereof are named like “selfArmTrigger”, I suppose.
- professroclaw 3mo ago[flagged]
- manoDev 3mo agoLovely. These React components are the new spam mail.
- gulugawa 3mo agoGreat work! It sounds to me like something a startup would use to vibe code a UI.
- noobcoder 3mo agoThe purple colors look very sloppy, pls not the purplish tint
- the_arun 3mo agoWell done. I don't know what others say, I liked it being a non UX person.
- SilverSlash 3mo agoI like the concept. It would indeed be good to have a modern component library with AI design tropes as I think the old components libs haven't caught up. But in this particular case I must say, a lot of the components here just look plain ugly.
- vladsiu 3mo ago[dead]
- glaslong 3mo agoFinally! Bootstrap for AI Wrappers
- smrtinsert 3mo agoNot nearly enough animated gradient dropshadow. Check out googles AI Mode button and the same loading button status thing while waiting for responses in AI Mode. Please add it so I don't have to prompt for it - I can't tell if I'm joking.
- emvied 3mo agoI never knew it was called an eyebrow pill!
- tanepiper 3mo agoI don't actually hate this...
- dongbinlee 3mo agoNow I can make my landing page look funded before the product exists.
- thedetailsguy 3mo agoNit - the UI glitches/flashes as I scroll the page.
- myaccountonhn 3mo agoIt's funny how many people here like it. Well it doesn't surprise me since the websites being upvoted here from startups look like this too. Personally I barf when I come across a website that looks like this and close it immediately. It's about as appealing as stock images. I also immediately think that this is for a SAAS that will be bog-slow, expensive and only integrates with github.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- azangru 3mo agoWell, at least the copy on the site reads like satire. I didn't notice it at first, looking at components; but then I started reading the text. P.S.: The popover description is brilliant: > The obtrusive newsletter modal every AI startup deploys. Takes over the entire viewport with a blurred backdrop. By design, neither the Escape key nor backdrop clicks close it; the visitor either submits the form inside or clicks the tiny dismissal link at the bottom. Pair with `timer` to auto-open after the visitor has skimmed a few paragraphs.
- myaccountonhn 3mo agoYes I think the satire is brilliant. It really does feel like just another saas.
- igorusovich89 3mo ago[flagged]
- cdogukank 3mo ago[dead]
- LucasOe 3mo agoFuck. My personal portfolio website has like three of these components, even though I don't like using AI for development.
- bhargab_kalita 3mo agoI really loved the design but I am getting overwhelmed by seeing the ui-libraries being dumped everday
- CarlitosHighway 3mo agoIt needs some kind of "Japan" component...don't ask me what it does or how it looks like, but sites with performative UI will need some kind of reference to Japan.
- rubyevans109 3mo agoThis is hilarious, I have definitely written components that look exactly like some of these before. The 'loading animation that looks busy' one hits too close to home. Do people really fall for this stuff in demos?
- m1rsh0 3mo agoPretty cool library. I'm gonna use it for one of my projects.
- aryasyn 3mo agoHaha well tagged, "Performative", finally a place for the majority of vibe coders to reference to and switch from blandly coded UI.