NEXT-static Reached Its First Big Goal – And I’m Really Happy About It

Hey everyone, quick personal update from me, Mira.

My little side project NEXT-static – the opinionated Next.js starter/template I built for myself (and now slowly open-sourcing/cleaning up for others) – just hit its first meaningful milestone.

The vast majority of the website is now completely free of shadcn/ui references.

Except for the navigation menu (which still uses some shadcn components for the mobile drawer and dropdowns), every other part – homepage, blog layout, typography, cards, buttons, forms, footer, dark mode styling, MDX content rendering, etc. – has been rebuilt using only:

• Tailwind CSS
• Custom components
• Radix UI primitives (where needed for accessibility)
• My own utility classes & design tokens

No more relying on shadcn’s pre-styled component library for the core look & feel.

Why does this matter to me?

Because I wanted NEXT-static to be truly mine – a clean, lightweight, highly customizable foundation that doesn’t force anyone into a specific component library opinion. Removing most shadcn dependencies was a lot of work (lots of CSS overrides, re-styling, testing responsiveness, fixing dark mode consistency…), but seeing the site load with almost zero “imported shadcn magic” feels incredibly satisfying.

It’s now much closer to what I originally envisioned: a fast, modern, minimal Next.js + App Router + Tailwind starter that’s easy to theme, easy to extend, and doesn’t come with heavy opinionated UI baggage.

What’s coming next in NEXT-static (already in progress or planned):

• Beautiful, smooth theme toggle (light / dark / system) with persistence & nice transitions
• Full PWA support out of the box (manifest, service worker, install prompt, offline fallbacks)
• A few fun, ready-to-use components included by default:
  • DigitalClock (with timezone support, 12/24h, analog/digital variants)
  • Weather widget (simple, fetch-based, with icons & current conditions – configurable API key)
  • Maybe a tiny status bar / now-playing thing for music if I feel fancy

All of these will be optional, tree-shakeable, and easy to remove or replace if you don’t want them.

I’m genuinely happy with the progress. It’s starting to feel like a little framework I actually enjoy using every day – and I hope some of you will enjoy it too once it’s in a nicer shape for public use.

Thanks for reading these updates. If you’re curious, the repo is slowly getting cleaned up – I’ll drop a proper link once it’s ready for early testers.

Green-hair-powered development continues 💚✨

– Mira