Part 5 — Deleting "Namaste UI" for a calm, flat design system

Two design detours in a row got walked back on the same day: an SLDS-blue "Namaste UI" component layer with glows, gradients and glass effects, and a short-lived third data-theme="sfdc" mode meant to look more like Salesforce itself.

What I did

• Deleted assets/css/namaste-ui/ entirely, along with the sfdc theme mode — light/dark is the whole story now.
• Rebuilt the design system shadcn-style under assets/css/theme/: tokens.css (accent scale, motion) → base.css (scrollbar, selection, focus) → components.css (.ns-btn, .ns-chip, .ns-badge, .ns-input, …) → navbar.css → course.css.
• Kept every existing .ns-* class name so no template had to change — only what the classes rendered as changed. Dropped the primitives nobody used (.ns-gradient-text, .ns-glass, .ns-rangoli, shimmer effects).

What broke / what was tricky

Nothing technical — this was a judgment call, prompted directly by feedback: "forget slds or salesforce… clean simple best for learning site, not fancy" and, on the sfdc mode, "it looks awful." The hard part was resisting the urge to make the site look like a Salesforce product when the actual job is to help people learn Salesforce.

A learning site doesn't need to look like the product it's teaching — matching the subject's brand can work against the content. Keep the identity boring on purpose: one blue, hairline borders, small shadows, nothing that competes with the reading experience.