# Announcement

> A news pill with an inset badge that nests in its curve.

Actions · [Docs](https://ui.ssntl.app/docs/components/announcement) · `npx shadcn@latest add @ssntl/announcement`

Installs `components/ui/announcement.tsx`, with `utils`, `elevation`. Read this file before you use, change or review it.

## When to use it

- For one piece of news at the top of a page, linking to it.

## When not to

- For more than one announcement at a time, or for urgent system messages (use Notice).

## Usage

```tsx
import { Announcement, AnnouncementTag } from "@/components/ui/announcement"

;<Announcement href="/news/gift-cards">
  <AnnouncementTag>New</AnnouncementTag>
  Gift cards are here
</Announcement>
```

## Rules for Announcement

- **Alert + inset badge.** A pill badge 4px inside a pill, so the badge's radius is the outer radius minus the padding.
- The badge carries a word (New, Beta), and the link text says what is new.
- The whole pill is one target; the arrow moves 2px on hover and stays still with reduced motion.

## Keyboard

| Key   | Action            |
| ----- | ----------------- |
| Enter | Follows the link. |

## How it is built

A pill that links to news ("New · Gift cards are here"). Nested corners: the badge is a pill inset 4px inside a pill, so its radius is the outer one minus the padding, by construction. The badge carries a word, and the whole pill is one 40px target.

## API notes

- `AnnouncementTag`: The inset badge: a word, on the card surface.

## UI foundations it applies

- **Alert + inset badge** (Nested corners): Shrink a nested badge's radius by the padding around it.

## Interaction

- Every control has an accessible name: its visible label, or `aria-label` for icon-only controls.
- Every keyboard-reachable control shows a visible focus ring (2px, offset 2px, the ring token).
- Anything you can do with a pointer you can do with the keyboard.
- Targets are 48px (44px minimum for dense rows), with at least 8px between neighbours (the system's density); the hit area covers the whole visible control.
- Press feedback is 0.96 scale in 150ms (`--es-press`, `--duration-fast`); never below 0.96, never slow, and a disabled control never scales.
- One primary action per view; past three secondary actions, the rest go in a menu.
- Hover styles only on pointer devices; never hide a control's function behind hover.
- **Undo beats confirmation.** A frequent, reversible action runs at once and offers Undo (Order archived. Undo). Confirm only what can't be undone, affects other people or destroys many items. A destructive action is red text, placed last.
- Never disable a submit button until the form is valid; validate on submit. While pending, use `aria-disabled="true"` with a spinner beside the label, since disabled drops focus.

## Typography

- Map each text role to a step of the scale; supporting text never outsizes its title.
- Headings balance (`text-balance`); paragraphs avoid orphans (`text-pretty`) and stay under about 70 characters (`max-w-prose`).
- Align paragraphs to the start edge; center only a short single line.
- Two sizes on one line share a baseline (`items-baseline`).
- Codes, IDs and keys use the mono face (Code), where every character is unambiguous.
- Light weights (100–300) only at 28px and up.
- `user-select`: none only on drag surfaces and on choice labels (a quick double click must toggle, not select); never on content people may copy.

## Navigation

- Mark the current place with `aria-current` and with weight and color, never color alone.
- Selection moves instantly on click; a highlight never lags behind it.
- Lead with the task; navigation chrome steps back until it is needed.

## Design tokens only

- Use the system's tokens for every design value: type roles (`text-caption` 13, `text-label` 15, `text-body` 17, `text-lead` 20, `text-heading` 22, `text-title` 32, `text-headline` 48, `text-display` 72), radii (`rounded-xs` 8 … xl 44), spacing steps, colors, shadows and motion. If a value doesn't exist, take the nearest token. Never write text-[15px], rounded-[24px] or bg-[#…]; `pnpm lint` rejects them.
- Type roles already carry line height, tracking and weight. Pick the role; never add `leading-*` or `tracking-*` on top.
- **Nested corners are concentric.** Inner radius = outer radius − padding − border width (`rounded-outer`-* p-concentric-* `rounded-inner`). Past 24px of padding, or with deliberately uneven padding, each layer keeps its own radius token.
- Separate surfaces by tone, not borders. A border is for structure (a divider) or state (an input, a selection).

## Accessibility baseline

- Text meets 4.5:1 against its surface (3:1 at 24px and up, or 18.67px bold); input borders, focus rings and chart marks meet 3:1, in light and dark. Text on a translucent color (`white/80`, /50, color-mix) is measured as rendered over its background; the theme pairs are checked in lint.
- Meaning never rides on color alone: a state carries a word, an icon or a pattern as well.
- Every page fits a 320px screen at 200% zoom with no horizontal scroll; a grid that holds content uses grid-cols-[minmax(0,1fr)] and flex children get min-w-0. Never set maximum-scale=1 or user-scalable=no.
- A focused element is never hidden under sticky chrome: set scroll-padding to the header's height (and to footers or banners at the bottom).
- On a client-side route change, update the title and move focus to the new page's main content.
- **Respect prefers-reduced-motion.** Keep opacity and color, drop movement, scale and blur.
- Content is never truncated without a way to read all of it; long names wrap. A hover-only title tooltip doesn't count as a way back.

## Writing

- Sentence case everywhere; no ALL CAPS except the Eyebrow role.
- One concept, one word, across navigation, headings and buttons.
- Buttons are a verb and its object and say what happens (Delete product, not OK).
- An error says what went wrong and how to fix it, in the user's language.
- **Status copy follows one pattern.** In progress is the verb in -ing (Saving changes…), done names the object and the past tense with no “successfully” (Changes saved), a failure gives the next step, partial results give counts. Cut “Please”.
- A confirmation names the action and the object (Delete Ceramic cup?), never “Are you sure?”. Deleting an account, a workspace or a store asks for its name to be typed.
- Show known requirements as helper text before input, not only as an error after it. Links never say “Click here”, and no two links on a page say “Learn more”.
- Build each sentence as one translatable message, never concatenated around a variable; join lists with Intl.`ListFormat`.
- **Use real characters.** An en dash for ranges (09:30–17:45), × for dimensions, curly quotes, an ellipsis (…).

## Fixing

- Take the cheapest fix that works, in this order: delete (a separator space would carry, an animation on a frequent action, an ARIA attribute a native element makes redundant), use the platform (the native element or control, the browser's focus ring), reuse what the system has (a token, a spacing step, a motion curve), correct the value, and only then add something new.
- Code that adds what a deletion would fix is a problem in itself; fix it by removing.
- A documented convention settles matters of taste, but never excuses a release blocker.

## Worst-case content

- Build and test with the worst real values, not the happy ones: long hyphenated names with diacritics, unbreakable emails and URLs, German compounds, translations about 30% longer, emoji and right-to-left names.
- Unbreakable strings wrap anywhere; nothing pushes its siblings off a row or out of a container.
- Every image has a fallback and a box: a failed avatar shows initials, a frame keeps its ratio, so loading never shifts the layout.
- **Show data as data.** Escape HTML, never render null, undefined or NaN, and round floating point before display.
- **Check the environment as well.** A 280px column, a 2560px screen, 200% zoom, dark mode, `dir="rtl"` and touch.

## Icons

- One icon set (Lucide) at one stroke: 1.6, the Essential Design spec, beside regular and medium text; a heavier stroke only where a small glyph must read (a 16px check). (better-ui proposes rendered strokes of 1.5–2px with `absoluteStrokeWidth`; the system's documented stroke takes precedence as a matter of style.)
- Inline icons are 1em–1.25em of the text beside them.
- Icons are 20px beside labels and 16px in dense controls, at the size they were drawn; a well or a button, not a bigger glyph, gives them room.
- One SVG per icon, colored with `currentColor`; hover, selected and disabled states come from color and opacity, never from separate assets.
- Decorative icons are `aria-hidden`; an icon that is the only content of a control gets its name from the control.

## Light, dark and languages

- Design both themes from the tokens; dark mode is chosen, not inverted. Check every new pair in both.
- Pass every visible and accessible string as a prop or child, so the component works in any language; never hard-code copy inside it.
- Use logical properties (ms-, me-, start-, end-) so layouts mirror in right-to-left languages; `translateX` and background-position need a right-to-left override. Mirror only icons whose meaning follows reading direction (arrows, chevrons), and wrap mixed-direction values in `<bdi>`.
- **Visual order matches DOM order.** No order, row-reverse or grid placement that reorders content.
- Switching themes pauses transitions for the switch, so every surface changes at once.

## Before you ship

- [ ] Every interactive control has an accessible name.
- [ ] Every keyboard-reachable control shows a visible focus indicator.
- [ ] Nothing is reachable by pointer but not by keyboard.
- [ ] Motion and auto-playing content respect prefers-reduced-motion.
- [ ] Nothing is clipped, overlapped or unreachable at 320px width or 200% zoom.
- [ ] Body and control text pass their contrast ratio.
- [ ] No state or meaning is carried by color alone.
- [ ] Destructive actions have a confirmation, an undo, or a distinct treatment.
- [ ] No content is truncated without a way to reach the full value.
- [ ] No content or control hides past a scroll edge or disclosure without a visible cue.
- [ ] Every error names a way to recover.
- [ ] Semantic colors are used for their meaning only (danger never on a safe action).
- [ ] No state change is carried by motion alone.
- [ ] Nothing focused hides under sticky chrome, and overlays contain their own scroll.
- [ ] Worst-case values (long, empty, many, missing, right-to-left) don't break the layout.

## Review with these skills

Every interface built with ssntl/ui is reviewed with the same skills the library is. Install them once and keep them current:

```bash
npx skills@latest add https://github.com/jakubkrehel/skills --skill better-interface
npx skills@latest add jakubkrehel/make-interfaces-feel-better
npx skills@latest add emilkowalski/skills
```

- **better-interface** (Jakub Krehel): The full review: accessibility, layout, writing, typography, color and polish. Its escalation triggers block a release.
- **make-interfaces-feel-better** (Jakub Krehel): The details: concentric radii, optical alignment, press scale, interruptible and subtle motion, hit areas.
- **emilkowalski/skills** (Emil Kowalski): Design engineering: easing, durations, springs and gestures (emil-design-eng, review-animations, animation-performance) and the worst-case values that break a UI (break-ui).

## Related

- [Tag](tag.md): A status pill where the state is always a word; the dot only supports it.
- [Link](link.md): An inline link that is underlined as well as blue, says where it goes and breaks long URLs.
- [Notice](notice.md): A dismissible message with a full-size close button and concentric corners.

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Generated from the ssntl/ui source by `scripts/build-rules.mjs`. The whole rulebook is [ssntl-ui.md](ssntl-ui.md); every component's rules are at https://ui.ssntl.app/rules.
