Principles
How Garðr builds.
Five commitments. Simple to state, harder to keep — which is why they are written down.
Thought before complexity
Build what improves the experience.
Every feature has a cost that someone eventually pays — in attention, in maintenance, in trust. We add things when they make the experience better, and we are willing to leave things out when they do not.
Systems over fragments
Products should work together intentionally.
A product is never only itself. It shares a language, a set of expectations and a home with everything around it. We design the connections as carefully as the parts.
Details are architecture
Small decisions create the whole.
Defaults, spacing, an error message, the time between a tap and a response. People rarely notice any one of them; they always notice all of them together.
Technology should belong
Tools should feel natural within the places people live and work.
Good tools respect their surroundings. They are dependable, private by default and quiet when they are not needed — present without demanding to be the centre.
Build beyond the release
Consider longevity, maintenance and evolution.
Shipping is a beginning. We make choices that will still hold in years — in structure, in data, in the promises we make to the people who rely on what we build.
Every layer matters. So every layer is built with the same care.