Dashboard Styling Guide

Note: ReviewFlow does not use TailwindCSS or React. The dashboard is built with plain HTML, CSS custom properties, and vanilla JavaScript. This skill covers the styling conventions for the dashboard.

Activation

This skill activates for:

• Creating or modifying dashboard UI elements
• Optimizing styles and performance
• Resolving layout/responsive issues
• Reviewing CSS conventions

Principles

CSS Custom Properties → Semantic naming → Consistent spacing

Always use existing CSS custom properties (design tokens) before adding new values.

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Design Tokens

Available tokens

Tokens are defined as CSS custom properties in src/interface-adapters/views/dashboard/styles.css:

:root {
  /* Backgrounds */
  --nsc-bg-base: #0b1220;
  --nsc-bg-elevated: #111a2b;
  --nsc-bg-surface: #162235;
  --nsc-bg-surface-strong: #1c2a40;

  /* Borders */
  --nsc-border-soft: rgba(163, 192, 224, 0.16);
  --nsc-border-strong: rgba(163, 192, 224, 0.28);

  /* Text */
  --nsc-text-primary: #e8efff;
  --nsc-text-secondary: #b2c1dd;
  --nsc-text-muted: #8393b0;

  /* Accent colors */
  --nsc-focus: #7ad8ff;
  --nsc-action: #60c7ff;
  --nsc-warning: #f4bc71;
  --nsc-success: #62d3a8;
  --nsc-danger: #f07f88;
}

/* Use tokens */
background: var(--nsc-bg-surface);
color: var(--nsc-text-primary);
border: 1px solid var(--nsc-border-soft);

/* Avoid hardcoded values */
background: #162235;
color: #e8efff;

---

Best Practices

Naming conventions

Use semantic, BEM-inspired class names:

/* Good: semantic and descriptive */
.review-card { }
.review-card__header { }
.review-card__score { }
.review-card--critical { }

/* Bad: generic or cryptic */
.card1 { }
.blue-box { }
.mt20 { }

Property order

Recommended order in declarations:

1. Layout (display, flex, grid)
2. Positioning (position, top, left)
3. Box model (margin, padding, width, height)
4. Typography (font-, text-, line-height)
5. Visual (background, border, color)
6. Misc (cursor, opacity, transition)

Reusable patterns

Extract repeated patterns into shared classes:

/* Reusable surface pattern */
.surface {
  background: var(--nsc-bg-surface);
  border: 1px solid var(--nsc-border-soft);
  border-radius: 8px;
  padding: 16px;
}

.surface--elevated {
  background: var(--nsc-bg-elevated);
}

---

Responsive Design

Mobile-first approach

/* Base styles = mobile */
.dashboard-grid {
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
  gap: 16px;
}

/* Tablet and above */
@media (min-width: 768px) {
  .dashboard-grid {
    flex-direction: row;
    flex-wrap: wrap;
  }
}

/* Desktop */
@media (min-width: 1024px) {
  .dashboard-grid {
    display: grid;
    grid-template-columns: repeat(3, 1fr);
  }
}

---

File structure

src/interface-adapters/views/dashboard/
├── index.html       # Dashboard HTML template
└── styles.css       # All dashboard styles

Before adding styles

1. Check if a CSS custom property already exists for the value
2. Check if a similar class already exists in styles.css
3. If not, add using existing naming conventions

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Anti-patterns

To avoid

/* Inline styles in HTML */
style="background-color: #2a4054"

/* Hardcoded colors instead of tokens */
color: #e8efff;  /* Use var(--nsc-text-primary) */

/* !important (except extreme cases) */
padding: 16px !important;

/* Deep nesting */
.dashboard .main .section .card .header .title { }
/* Prefer: .card__title { } */

/* Magic numbers without explanation */
margin-top: 37px;

Good practices

/* Use custom properties consistently */
.status-badge {
  background: var(--nsc-bg-surface-strong);
  color: var(--nsc-text-secondary);
  border: 1px solid var(--nsc-border-soft);
  border-radius: 4px;
  padding: 4px 8px;
  font-size: 0.75rem;
}

.status-badge--success {
  color: var(--nsc-success);
  border-color: var(--nsc-success);
}

.status-badge--danger {
  color: var(--nsc-danger);
  border-color: var(--nsc-danger);
}

---

Debugging

Recommended tools

• Browser DevTools -> Inspect element, computed styles
• Check CSS custom property values in the :root selector
• Use the Elements panel to verify which styles are being applied or overridden