I just launched ShadcnThemer.com

Every shadcn/ui app looks the same. Gray backgrounds, zinc accents, default border radius. The components are great, but everyone ships with the same colors.

I built ShadcnThemer.com to fix that—an open-source web app for creating, customizing, and sharing themes for shadcn/ui.

Why another theme editor?

I'd built something similar before: the Theme Studio for VS Code, which became a community hub where thousands of developers designed and shared editor themes. I wanted to bring that same energy to shadcn.

ShadcnThemer is 100% free and open source.

How it works

The editor gives you visual controls for every shadcn CSS variable—background, foreground, primary, secondary, muted, accent, destructive, and more. Everything uses the OKLCH color space for perceptually uniform color picking.

As you tweak values, a live preview updates across example UI components: buttons, cards, forms, dialogs, tables. You see exactly how your theme looks in both light and dark mode simultaneously.

When you're happy with it, export as CSS or use the shadcn CLI registry command to pull it directly into your project.

The community aspect

The real value isn't the editor—it's the library of community themes. Browse what others have built, star your favorites, fork a theme as a starting point for your own.

This was the same pattern that made Theme Studio successful. Give people tools to create, make sharing frictionless, and a library of quality themes emerges organically.

The stack

I built it with some of my favorites:

• Next.js 15 with App Router
• Tailwind CSS 4
• Drizzle ORM with PostgreSQL
• Supabase for auth and storage
• Hono for the API layer
• TanStack Query for state management

I had a blast using Cursor and leveling-up my "agentic engineering" skills (oof that sounds buzzword-y) throughout development. The combination of a modern stack and AI assistance made the build surprisingly fast.

The launch

I posted to Show HN and the feedback was immediate and useful:

• Sweat the small UX details. Someone pointed out that theme links used <button> instead of <a>, breaking middle-click. A tiny oversight, but it made browsing themes frustrating. Fixed within hours.
• Auth friction kills exploration. Multiple people bounced because they had to sign up just to try it. I shipped local theme editing with localStorage persistence the same day—no account required.
• Ship fixes fast, publicly. Responding to feedback in real-time builds trust. People saw their complaints addressed within hours and came back to try again.

136 points, 41 comments, and a bunch of themes created by the community that first week.

Go make something that isn't gray

This was a fun one to ship. If your shadcn app still looks like everyone else's, go fix that.

Try it at shadcnthemer.com, or check out the source on GitHub.