# Forge

## Why Forge?

CSS is powerful, but hostile.

### Problems with CSS

- Styles are **global and open** — anything can override anything.
- There’s **no link** between a class in markup and its definition.
- Inline styles exist because there’s **no structured way to vary styles per instance**.
- Overrides are silent — conflicts happen without feedback.
- Complex components require selector gymnastics and reach-in styling.

### What Forge Does Instead

- Styles are **local to components** and attached by generated handles, not strings.
- **Parts** give components named sub-targets without selectors.
- **Variants** replace inline styles with typed, declarative parameters.
- Style composition is **deterministic** (known merge order, last-wins).
- Overlapping changes are **warned about in dev**, not silently ignored.

### What Forge Is

- A typed, local, variant-driven way to author CSS.
- A system that optimizes for **people typing at a keyboard**, not selectors in a cascade.

### What Forge Is Not

- Not a new component model.
- Not a new language.
- Not a CSS replacement — it compiles _to_ CSS, but removes the chaos.

Example:

```tsx
import { define } from "forge"

export const Button = define("button", {
  base: "button",

  padding: 20,
  background: "blue",

  variants: {
    kind: {
      danger: { background: "red" },
      warning: { background: "yellow" },
    }
  },
})

// Usage
<Button>Click me</Button>
<Button kind="danger">Click me carefully</Button>
<Button kind="warning">Click me?</Button>

export const Profile = define("div", {
  padding: 50,
  background: "red",

  parts: {
    Header: { display: "flex" },
    Avatar: { base: 'img', width: 50 },
    Bio: { color: "gray" },
  },

  variants: {
    size: {
      small: {
        parts: { Avatar: { width: 20 }}
      }
    }
  },

  render({ props, parts: { Root, Header, Avatar, Bio } }) {
    return (
      <Root>
        <Header>
          <Avatar src={props.pic} />
          <Bio>{props.bio}</Bio>
        </Header>
      </Root>
    )
  },
})

// Usage:
import { Profile } from './whatever'

<Profile pic={user.pic} bio={user.bio} />
```