March 2026 — Create
A new Create workflow, shadcn v4 support, heading fonts, Stimulus.js migration, and prehydration fixes.
Published
March 2026 — Create
A new Create workflow, shadcn v4 support, heading fonts, Stimulus.js migration, and prehydration fixes.
March was the heaviest month yet. The Create workflow shipped as a standalone product surface, the theme system got heading font support and two new presets, and a significant chunk of the UI was migrated to Stimulus.js to solve a class of prehydration bugs that had been accumulating since the theme editor launched.
Create workflow
/create is a visual bejamas init companion. Pick your colors, fonts, and radius, browse or shuffle through presets, and get a ready-to-run init command. No flags, no guessing.
The preset system uses the same encoding as shadcn/create. If you have a preset code from shadcn, paste it into the URL on our page and it just works — all shadcn styles are included. The difference is that everything here outputs Astro-native components, no React required.
shadcn v4 support
The CLI now handles both shadcn v3 and v4 init flows. If you’re on v4, it uses the new init path. If you’re on v3, it falls back to non-interactive mode with the init and add commands.
v3 is pinned to 3.8.5 for stability. This specific version is the last one before shadcn changed how it handles component output, and we’re not ready to chase that change yet.
Navigation menu
The Navigation Menu got a significant update this month:
- Indicator bar now animates between active items
- Opening and closing animations are closer to shadcn/base-ui behavior
- The Astro registry surface was aligned with the base-ui API so imports are consistent
Heading font
The theme now has a separate heading font slot. Set it independently from your body font, useful for editorial designs that pair a display typeface with a readable body font.
The heading font variable flows through h1–h6 automatically. You can also override it per-component using a CSS variable.
Luma style and Bejamas preset
Two new additions to the preset library:
Luma: a color style built around luminance-based tones rather than hue. It produces cleaner neutral palettes that work well as a base for accent colors. Adapted from shadcn/ui, alongside the existing Vega and Mira presets.
Bejamas preset: the bejamas/ui brand colors and radius as an installable preset. Useful as a reference for what the defaults are trying to achieve.
Stimulus.js migration
The sidebar and create flow were ported from Alpine to Stimulus. The driving reason was prehydration: Alpine’s reactivity model made it difficult to guarantee that the correct visual state was painted before the framework booted, which caused flash-of-unstyled-content on slow connections.
Stimulus controllers run synchronously on connect, which means styles can be applied in a predictable way during the first paint. The migration also made the controller boundaries clearer: each controller owns exactly the DOM it needs.
Static build and caching
More pages are now pre-rendered at build time instead of rendered on-demand. Server islands (the parts that need to be dynamic) now have explicit cache headers, which reduces origin load significantly.
Prehydration fixes
Several components were painting incorrect state before JavaScript booted:
- Theme tabs: active tab and indicator position are now painted server-side
- Nav controls: theme and preset buttons in the header now show the correct state before JS runs
- Preset summaries: custom and shuffled preset display names are pre-computed and injected into the HTML, not computed on the client
- Editor bootstrap: the create workflow now pre-paints the correct style before the editor initializes
Together these eliminated the most visible layout shifts in the UI.