Design System: Actual Budget

1. Overview

Creative North Star: "The Home Office"

Actual feels like a tidy personal desk: familiar, unpretentious, everything within reach. It is a tool people open weekly for years to reconcile accounts and move envelope money around, so the interface optimizes for routine, not first impressions. Density is moderate-to-high (this is a table-driven app), feedback is instant, and decoration is close to zero. The financial numbers are the interface; everything else exists to keep them legible and trustworthy.

The system explicitly rejects fintech-startup gloss (gradient heroes, glassmorphism, crypto-dashboard neon) and corporate banking UI (navy-and-gold enterprise-portal density). It is calm, trustworthy, and practical, and it must render identically well in three themes: light, dark, and midnight.

Key Characteristics:

• Table-first layouts with tabular numerals everywhere money appears
• One accent (Actual Purple) used sparingly for primary actions and selection
• Semantic color tokens only; components never hardcode hex values
• Utilitarian, compact components built for daily repetition
• Flat-first surfaces; shadows reserved for transient overlays

2. Colors

A calm navy-neutral base with one confident purple accent and strict semantic roles for money.

All hex values in this file (frontmatter included) are the light-theme palette mapping. The dark and midnight themes remap the same semantic roles to different palette values, so never use these hexes directly in components — route every color through the theme.* semantic tokens (see The Semantic Token Rule below).

Primary

• Actual Purple (#8719e0): The single brand accent. Primary buttons, selected rows and borders, active navigation, mobile header. Hover lightens to Lifted Purple (#a368fc).

Neutral

• Navy Ink (#102a43): Sidebar background, darkest text. The app's anchor dark.
• Page Ink (#272630): Default body text on light surfaces.
• Navy Slate (#627d98): Secondary and subdued text, table headers.
• Navy Mist (#e8ecf0): Page background, table borders, dividers.
• Navy Frost (#f7fafc): Hover rows, raised header rows.
• Surface White (#ffffff): Tables, cards, menus, modals.

Tertiary (semantic money and status colors)

• Positive Green (#147d64): Positive amounts and funded budgets.
• Negative Red (#e12d39): Negative amounts, overspending, failures.
• Link Blue (#1980d4): Links and informational highlights.
• Warning Gold (#b88115): Underfunded templates, pending states.

Named Rules

The Semantic Token Rule. Components never use raw palette values or hex codes. Every color goes through the theme.* semantic layer (--color-* custom properties) so all three themes (light, dark, midnight) stay correct. A hardcoded hex in a component is a bug.

The One Accent Rule. Actual Purple appears on well under 10% of any screen: primary action, current selection, active nav. It never decorates.

The Never-Color-Alone Rule. Positive/negative money state is conveyed by sign and context as well as color; green/red are reinforcement, never the only signal.

3. Typography

Body Font: Inter Variable (with system-ui fallback stack) Label/Mono behavior: Same family; financial figures switch on tabular OpenType features

Character: One workhorse sans at compact sizes. No display serif, no font pairing games: hierarchy comes from weight and size, and the typographic star is the number column.

Hierarchy

• Display (600, 30px): Page-level headings and large balances. Rare.
• Headline (700, 20px, 0.5px letter-spacing): Section titles.
• Title (500, 15px): Emphasized in-table and card text.
• Body (400, 16px): Default text.
• Label (400, 13px): Table meta, menus, dense secondary text; 12px and 10px steps exist for the tightest spots.

Named Rules

The Tabular Number Rule. Every standalone financial figure renders with font-feature-settings: "tnum", "ss01", "ss04" (via FinancialText or styles.tnum) so digits align in columns and disambiguate. A proportional-figure money column is a bug.

4. Elevation

Flat-first with ambient shadows. Structure comes from 1px borders (Navy Mist) and background shifts (White on Mist, Frost on hover), not depth. Shadows exist only to lift transient surfaces above the page: menus, tooltips, popovers, modals. Persistent surfaces like tables and cards sit flat or carry the faint card shadow at most.

Shadow Vocabulary

• Card (box-shadow: 0 1px 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.12), 0 1px 2px rgba(0,0,0,0.24)): Resting cards and small raised widgets.
• Ambient (box-shadow: 0 2px 4px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.1)): Focused inputs, subtle lift.
• Large (box-shadow: 0 15px 30px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.11), 0 5px 15px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.08)): Tooltips, popovers, floating panels.

Named Rules

The Transient-Only Rule. If a surface stays on screen, it gets a border. If it appears on interaction and disappears, it may cast a shadow.

5. Components

Utilitarian and quick: compact paddings, instant state feedback, built for daily repetition. All values below are the light theme; every color routes through the semantic token layer.

Buttons

• Shape: Gently rounded (4px radius), compact padding (5px 10px)
• Primary: Actual Purple background, white text; hover lifts to Lifted Purple with a soft shadow transition (box-shadow .25s)
• Normal: White background, Navy Ink text, 1px navy border
• Bare: Transparent, 5px padding; background tint on hover/press. The workhorse for in-table actions

Inputs / Fields

• Style: White background, 1px border, 4px radius, 5px padding
• Focus: Border switches to the selected accent; big inputs drop the border and take the ambient shadow instead
• Big variant: 10px padding for mobile and prominent forms (40px minimum touch height on mobile)

Cards / Containers

• Corner Style: 6px radius on table containers (top corners), 4px elsewhere
• Background: Surface White on Navy Mist page background
• Shadow Strategy: Card shadow at most; structure via 1px Navy Mist border
• Internal Padding: 16-20px

Navigation

• Sidebar: Navy Ink background, light navy text; hover darkens the row, selection marked with a purple accent and purple text. Status states (pending/positive/failed) tint the item background gold/green/red
• Mobile: Purple header, white nav bar, purple selected item

Pills / Chips

• Style: Editor pills: tinted background, 4px radius, 3px 5px padding. Used for rule conditions and inline tokens

Signature Component: The Money Table

The core surface of the app. White rows on 1px Navy Mist borders, Frost hover, purple-bordered selection, sticky header with Slate 13px text, amounts right-aligned in tabular figures colored by the semantic money tokens. Alternate-row striping is theme-controlled, never hardcoded.

6. Do's and Don'ts

Do:

• Do route every color through theme.* semantic tokens so light, dark, and midnight themes all work. Test all three.
• Do wrap standalone financial numbers in FinancialText or apply styles.tnum.
• Do keep components compact and quick: 4px radii, 5-10px paddings, instant hover/press states.
• Do reuse the existing component library (@actual-app/components) before writing new UI.
• Do keep Actual Purple scarce: primary action and selection only.
• Do respect the breakpoints: 512px (small), 730px (medium), 1100px (wide); mobile touch targets are at least 40px tall.

Don't:

• Don't use fintech-startup gloss: gradient heroes, glassmorphism, neon accents, crypto-dashboard styling (PRODUCT.md anti-reference).
• Don't use corporate banking UI patterns: navy-and-gold, enterprise-portal density, legalese energy (PRODUCT.md anti-reference).
• Don't hardcode hex values or raw --palette-* colors in components; the semantic layer is the only entry point.
• Don't rely on color alone for positive/negative amounts.
• Don't put shadows on persistent surfaces; shadows are for transient overlays only.
• Don't use border-left/border-right thicker than 1px as a colored accent stripe.
• Don't animate layout properties; transitions are for color, opacity, and shadow (like the button's box-shadow .25s).