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No.140 · Cursors

Caliper

A measuring cursor for design specs. Full-bleed hairlines with live X/Y readouts; hover a layer for its size and red spacing lines to its frame, the way a design tool shows them. Drag to measure any distance and angle, click to drop a pin, and hold Shift to snap to the 8px grid.

The prompt

Written for the variant you picked above: Blueprint

Build a measuring cursor as a wrapper component, for design-spec pages. Overlay: an aria-hidden, pointer-events:none layer above the children (the host is relative, overflow hidden, user-select none). Under (hover: hover) and (pointer: fine) the system cursor is hidden inside the host except over real controls. Everything is host-local CSS pixels, corrected by rect.width / offsetWidth, and drawn directly in the event handlers with transforms — there is no animation loop. Crosshair: a vertical and a horizontal 1px line across the whole host through the pointer, dashed (5 on, 3 off) at 60% opacity, with mono readout chips "x 412" riding the top edge and "y 236" the left edge. Layers: any element marked data-measure is outlined (1px accent, 7% fill) with a "248 × 120" size chip below it. Its frame is the nearest ancestor with data-measure or data-measure-frame (else the host). For each side with a gap, draw a red 1px redline from the element's edge to the frame's edge, with 7px end ticks and the distance in a red chip at its middle — exactly the numbers from the layout, so 16px of padding reads 16. Measuring: pointerdown on anything that isn't a real control starts a measure (with pointer capture and no text selection); dragging more than 3px draws a dimension line with square end ticks and a chip "214 px · 32°" (angle counter-clockwise from east), kept after release. A click without a drag drops a pin (ring plus its coordinates); from then on a dashed dimension line runs from the pin to the pointer, live. Clicking the pin again lifts it; Escape clears pins and measures. Holding Shift snaps every coordinate to the grid (prop, default 8), shows the grid faintly, makes the crosshair solid and shows a "Snap 8" badge. A polite live region announces pins and measurements. theme sets the overlay colours. Selected variant — Blueprint: theme="blueprint": deep navy page (#0a1a2e) with a 24px sky-blue grid at 7%, sky crosshair and outlines (#7cc4ff), red redlines, amber dimension lines; ink #dcecff.

Notes

Interaction
Hover the card's layers; drag to measure; click to pin and move to read distances; hold Shift to snap; Esc clears.
Motion
Readouts and chips fade 140–160ms; everything else tracks the pointer 1:1 with no easing.
Accessibility
The overlay is aria-hidden; pins and measurements are announced in a polite live region, and the spec values are also listed as real text in the tokens panel. Real controls inside the host keep their cursor and their clicks. With reduced motion the fades are removed.
Responsive
The spec and tokens stack under 1024px. Measurements are host-local, so they stay correct at any width and inside scaled previews.
On touch
Touch shows no overlay; the spec reads as a normal page with its token list.

Featured

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81Atmosphere CardSmoked-glass link cards: colour pooled in the corners, slow contour currents underneath, a field that leans toward you.93Eclipse Event CardAn editorial event plate with an oversized date and an orbital eclipse bleeding in from the right, alive with slow drift.94Specimen CardAn object mounted under glass: hover lifts the pane with a sweep of reflection and swings out a paper catalogue tag.
95Silk FieldDomain-warped light that pours like liquid silk, with an optional glass lens that refracts the flow under your cursor.106IsobarA living weather map — contour lines traced over a drifting pressure field, with your cursor as a system of its own.
151Prompt ComposerA chat composer where attached files tuck into its top edge like tabs in a folder — they rise from behind it when added and sink back when removed. Send turns into stop while the reply streams.157Aura FieldA writing field where colour only exists while the AI is touching your text: the edge becomes a turning band of light and the words are rewritten in place, one by one, out of a soft blur.
205Halftone CTAA tall CTA banner where slow gold paint drifts beneath a fixed halftone grid, visible only through the dots.
212Nocturne Sign-inA single quiet column on near-black with a breathing seam of frost light behind it — email, password, magic link, nothing more.222Sigil Sign-inA split sign-in whose left half grows a geometric mark from your email — the same address always draws the same sigil.
275Voices CarouselA testimonial exhibition: one large quote at a time on frosted glass, crossfading between voices without ever resizing.
279Feral TitleA brutal condensed wordmark — heartbeat in the dark, letters slam in, a gash tears through and the word bleeds.
301 components