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Northwind Finance — Design System ("Aurora")

examples/showcases/banking/docs/DESIGN.md

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Northwind Finance — Design System ("Aurora")

A premium, airy, light-theme fintech aesthetic for the banking demo. This is a visual layer: it restyles the existing app without changing logic, data flow, REST calls, the CopilotKit provider/runtime, HITL approval flows, the threads drawer, auth/role gating, or the teachable policy-exception gate.

The system is token-driven. Tokens live in src/app/globals.css as CSS custom properties, surfaced to Tailwind v4 via @theme inline so utilities like bg-surface, text-ink-muted, from-brand-violet, ring-brand, bg-positive resolve everywhere. Both light (the primary showcase mode) and dark are fully supported via the class-based .light / .dark toggle on <html>.

Design language

  • Mood — premium, airy, modern. Generous whitespace, soft layered shadows, large radii, glassmorphism-lite surfaces.
  • Canvas — a soft lavender/lilac page background; content floats above it on white glass cards.
  • Primary — a violet→indigo gradient (#7C5CFC#5B3DF5), reused on the primary button, the active nav icon, the credit-card face, progress bars, and CTAs (.brand-gradient).
  • Semantics — income/positive is emerald green with an up-and-right arrow; expense/negative is rose/red with a down-and-right arrow.
  • Typography — Inter (loaded via next/font/google, exposed as --font-inter--font-sans). Very large bold balance numbers, small muted-grey labels, medium-weight violet section headings (.section-heading).
  • Shape — cards ~22px radius (rounded-2xl / --radius), buttons fully rounded pills (rounded-full), inputs/menus ~12–16px.

Color tokens

All colors are HSL triplets behind hsl(var(--token)), exposed as Tailwind colors (brand, brand-violet, brand-indigo, brand-soft, surface, surface-muted, canvas, ink, ink-muted, positive, positive-soft, negative, negative-soft, hairline).

TokenLightDarkRole
--canvas255 60% 97%252 30% 7%App background (lavender / deep indigo)
--surface0 0% 100%252 24% 11%Cards, sidebar, menus
--surface-muted252 40% 98%252 22% 14%Row hover, inset blocks
--ink252 30% 14%250 30% 96%Primary text / headings
--ink-muted250 12% 46%250 12% 66%Secondary / label text
--hairline252 30% 92%252 20% 22%Borders / dividers
--brand/-violet252 83% 67%(shared)Primary violet
--brand-indigo248 84% 60%(shared)Gradient end / heading color
--brand-soft252 90% 96%252 50% 18%Lilac chips, hover wash, avatar bg
--positive152 62% 40%152 56% 50%Income / available credit
--positive-soft152 70% 95%152 40% 16%Income chip background
--negative349 78% 56%349 80% 64%Expense / destructive
--negative-soft349 90% 96%349 40% 18%Expense chip background

Radius, shadow, font scale

TokenValue
--radius (lg)1.375rem (~22px) — card baseline
radius-xl/2xl+6px / +12px — sidebar, hero panels
radius-md/sm-6px / -10px
--shadow-softresting card shadow (low, violet-tinted)
--shadow-lifthover / floating panels / menus
--shadow-glowviolet glow under gradient CTAs
--font-sansvar(--font-inter), ui-sans-serif, system-ui…

Helper classes (in @layer components)

  • .brand-gradient — the 135° violet→indigo gradient (buttons, card, CTAs).
  • .brand-text-gradient — same gradient clipped to text.
  • .glass-surface — translucent surface + backdrop blur (floating sidebar, cards).
  • .section-heading — medium-weight violet/indigo section title.

Layout

  • Floating icon rail (src/components/layout.tsx) — ~72px, white glass, rounded, soft-shadowed, detached from the screen edge. Brand mark at top; nav icons (Dashboard / Credit Cards / Team) with a violet gradient active state; theme toggle, user switcher, and a help "?" pinned at the bottom. Role gating (Team only for admins) and the useAgentContext page readable are unchanged.
  • Dashboard (src/app/dashboard/page.tsx, mirrored by /cards) — two columns on a lavender canvas:
    • Left: "My Cards" (dashed add-card tile + a vivid gradient credit card, with a second card peeking behind) and "Recent Transactions" with a "View All" link, underline ALL / INCOME / EXPENSES tabs, a "TODAY" chip, and transaction rows (circular tinted badge + title + subtitle + colored amount).
    • Right rail: a tall rounded panel — Balance (large bold) + masked card number; an Income / Expenses split with colored arrows; a divider; Last Payment Details; a Statistics sparkline; and a gradient pill New Transaction → CTA.

Statistics chart

src/components/statistics-chart.tsx is a hand-rolled inline SVG area+line sparkline — no charting dependency. It takes a numeric series (derived from real transaction data, bucketed by month; falls back to representative seeded points when there isn't enough data), draws a violet→indigo gradient stroke over a soft gradient area fill, emphasizes the latest point, and labels the axis with the final point highlighted in violet. It includes an aria-label and an sr-only numeric summary.

Credit-card visual

src/components/card-visual.tsx exports GradientCreditCard (the vivid violet gradient face: EMV chip, masked •••• •••• •••• last4, holder, valid-thru, and a brand mark) plus VisaWordmark and the overlapping-circles MastercardMark. A subtle variant renders the dimmed card that peeks behind the active one.

CopilotKit chat popup

The embedded CopilotPopup is themed via CSS only — no component props were changed. The v2 chat scopes its shadcn-style tokens to [data-copilotkit]; globals.css re-points --primary / --primary-foreground / --ring on that selector (and its dark variant) to the brand violet, so the send button, focus rings, and links match. This is additive and degrades gracefully if the SDK's internals change. All chat wiring (provider, threads, suggestions, HITL) is untouched.

Accessibility

  • Focus-visible rings (ring-brand with offset) on buttons, tabs, inputs, menu items, and the help/nav controls.
  • Semantic <button> / <nav> / aria-current="page" on the active nav item; aria-labels on icon-only controls; role="img" + aria-label on the chart.
  • Color pairings (ink on surface, brand-foreground on gradient, positive/negative on their soft backgrounds) target legible contrast in both themes.