Changelog

Small release — one new utility component and some under-the-hood site hygiene.

• DownloadFile — drop-in component that exposes a file download button backed by a Next.js API route (/api/download/[name]). Useful for letting users grab component source files or assets directly from a doc page.

Site improvements

Added robots.txt, sitemap.xml, and llms.txt for better search engine and AI crawler indexing. Open Graph URLs and page metadata were also tightened up across the docs.

New components and pro-tier improvements.

• Dia Text Reveal — animated text reveal with a sweeping gradient that highlights words as they appear. Configurable duration, spread, and easing.
• Floating Navbar — scroll-velocity-aware navigation bar with dropdown menus and smooth show/hide behaviour.
• Scramble Text — characters shuffle randomly before resolving to the final string. Good for loading states and data reveals.
• Shimmering Text — lightweight shimmer animation layered over text, no canvas required.
• Favicon Search — fetches and displays favicons for any domain, with fallback handling.
• Switch & ThemeSwitch — animated toggle primitives; ThemeSwitch wires directly into next-themes.

Open in v0

Component previews now include an Open in v0 button so you can fork any component directly into a v0 project.

Pro updates

Gravity Stars is now a pro component. The Highlight component received improved mouse-event handling and bounds management. GlowingBadge variants were refined with updated glow styles. Pricing and activation pages were redesigned.

New components added to the registry this cycle.

• Dock — macOS-style icon dock with magnification on hover.
• Magnetic Button — button that snaps toward the cursor when hovered. Good for CTAs.
• Text Reveal — word-by-word or character-by-character reveal animation triggered on scroll.
• Animated List — staggered list that animates items in as they mount.

UnlumenSlider

The settings panel now uses a custom UnlumenSlider component instead of the generic shadcn Slider. Tighter styling, same API.

Component preview CDN

Preview thumbnails in the component gallery now load from Vercel Blob instead of local paths — faster cold loads and no more 404s after deploys.

Mostly infrastructure — nothing visible in the UI, but the codebase is cleaner and easier to maintain.

Registry naming

All registry item names now use short slugs. The old components-category-name pattern was completely unnecessary. components-animate-cursor is now just cursor, components-buttons-glow is glow, and so on. All registryDependencies, MDX references, and generated public/r/ files have been updated to match. As a side effect, the shadcn CLI install commands are shorter.

Premium config

Premium gating is now driven by a single premium.config.json file. Previously the isPremium logic was split between is-premium.ts and the build script with two separate lists to keep in sync. Now there's one place to edit — add or remove a slug from premiumItems and run pnpm registry:build.

Dependency security patches

Updated multiple packages/ui components, hooks, and utilities to address security advisories.

Biggest update so far. A lot of infrastructure work this week — things that aren't flashy but make the project feel like a real product.

Premium components

Some components are now gated behind a premium flag. They still show up in the docs with full previews, but the installation tab shows a PremiumAccessGate instead of the CLI command. The gate has a pixel shimmer background, a mouse-reveal spotlight, and a "Maybe later" button that morphs into a feedback text field.

Feedback API

When someone clicks "Maybe later", they can optionally leave a note. That note gets emailed via Resend. Rate-limited to one submission per IP per hour, and protected against HTML injection.

Newsletter

The Stay Tuned section on the landing page is now wired up. Emails go directly into a Resend Audience — no database needed. Deduplication and unsubscribe links are handled by Resend.

Theme transition performance

The circular reveal animation on dark/light mode toggle was laggy on large screens. Fixed by adding will-change: clip-path + GPU compositing hints to the CSS, reducing the animation duration from 0.45s to 0.38s, and skipping the transition entirely above 1800px width where the full-page snapshot rasterization is too expensive.

Pixel canvas stability

The AutoPixelCanvas no longer uses useTheme() from next-themes. It now watches document.documentElement class changes with a MutationObserver directly — zero React re-renders on theme change, palettes update instantly without rebuilding the canvas.

Credits frontmatter field

You can now add a credits field to any doc page frontmatter to credit external authors or inspirations. It renders inline next to the "Made by" line.

A big batch of new components. Most of these came from personal projects and felt worth extracting and documenting properly.

• Command Menu — composable ⌘K command palette with fuzzy search, custom groups, built-in theme switcher, and animated content reveal. This one took a while to get right.
• Orbiting Skills — animated badges that orbit a center element. On desktop the ring follows the cursor on hover; on mobile it's always visible. Good for hero sections and about pages.
• Progressive Blur — stacked backdrop-filter layers that create a smooth edge blur without any color overlay. Drop it at the top or bottom of a scrollable container.
• Tilt — spring-animated 3D tilt wrapper that reacts to cursor position. Primitive you can wrap around anything.
• Tilt Card — built on top of the Tilt primitive. Adds a floating image slot, badge variants, and a radial shine that follows the cursor.
• Cursor — custom cursor with a follower element. Velocity-based squish and skew on fast moves.
• Math Graph — real-time SVG math plotter with pan & zoom, crosshair tooltip, and support for multiple simultaneous expressions. Genuinely had no idea this would turn out this cool.
• Count Up — number counter that springs to its target value when it enters the viewport. Supports decimals, separators, and direction.

Filling out the library with utility-heavy components that work well as building blocks.

• Pixel Background — interactive canvas with tiny pixel particles that ripple outward from the center on hover. Configurable gap, speed, and palette.
• Gravity Stars — canvas background with gravity-driven star particles. Hover to attract or repel, click to spawn new ones.
• Clipped Circle — cursor-following soft glow spotlight inside a container. Pure CSS, no canvas.
• Copy Button — copy-to-clipboard button with animated icon swap and confirmation state.
• Glow Button — conic-gradient glow layer with six animation modes. Fully configurable colours and blur strength.
• Refresh Button — icon button that spins on click, with support for async callbacks. Handy for reloading live data or component previews.

First public version. The project was originally called Animate UI — renamed to Unlumen UI to better reflect where it's going.

The idea is simple: a registry of animated React components you can install with the shadcn CLI. Components are copied directly into your codebase, so you own the code and there's no dependency lock-in.

Included in this release:

• Floating Tooltip — cursor-following tooltip with velocity-based squish and skew. Supports a main label and an optional description. First component, and still one of my favourites.
• Core primitives and hooks shared across components.
• Documentation site built with Fumadocs.

More components coming fast — this was mostly about getting the foundation right.