Modern Frontend Motion Bento

Motion Bento

The router opens this file when the brief calls for the product itself to be the demo — small, working surfaces arranged in a grid, each one alive. If the brief is closer to "tell the brand's story across a scroll", route to cinematic-scroll instead.

Brief — when this direction fires

This direction handles work where:

• The page's job is to show the product running in miniature surfaces.
• The user converts because they believe the product is real — not because they read a feature list.
• The brand is a SaaS, AI tool, dev tool, internal-ops product, or modern B2B platform.
• The bento is the page, not a section inside another structure.

Typical briefs: a SaaS landing page, an AI product launch, a tool's marketing homepage, a workspace product, a dev-tools homepage, a modern feature section.

If the brief is closer to "make the page feel like a film" → cinematic-scroll. If the brief is closer to "make the page feel like a magazine" → publication. If the brief is "high-density data dashboard" → modernist-grid for the rigorous take.

Calibration

User overrides any dial inline.

Three signature moves

1. Labels outside, content inside

The card is the artifact — a working slice of the product. The label lives beneath the card in plain language, not inside competing for attention. This is the gallery-style move that defines the direction.

<div className="md:col-span-2">
  <div className="rounded-[2.5rem] border border-stone-200 bg-white p-10 ...">
    {/* The card IS the product surface. No marketing copy inside. */}
  </div>
  <p className="mt-4 px-1 text-sm text-stone-600 tracking-tight">
    Auto-prioritising tasks  {/* The label */}
  </p>
</div>

If the card needs its own marketing copy inside, the card has failed. The card shows; the label names.

2. The five archetypes — exactly one motion per card

Every motion-bento card draws from one of five archetypes. Each archetype has exactly one perpetual micro-interaction. Multiple motions in one card kills the focus.

A typical motion-bento page uses all five in one grid layout. Mixing archetypes is the point.

3. Mandatory isolation (memo + 'use client')

Each archetype lives in its own file or named component wrapped in memo() with 'use client' at the top. The page parent stays Server Component shape. Perpetual motion never inside a re-rendering parent — the interval will fire on every page update.

'use client';
import { memo } from 'react';

export const LibraryList = memo(function LibraryList() {
  // own useEffect, own setInterval, own cleanup
});

If perpetual motion ships inside a non-memoized parent, the page is broken — even if it looks fine. Strict cleanup on every useEffect.

Materials

Typography

• Display + body: a single humanist sans family — Geist, Satoshi. Display weight 500–600 for the headline; body 400.
• Mono: Geist Mono, JetBrains Mono. Mandatory for all numbers, metric values, build numbers, timestamps, file sizes, IDs.
• No serifs. Serifs break the dashboard register. Editorial serif pages route to publication instead.
• Headline size restrained: clamp(2.25rem, 4.6vw, 3.9rem). The bento is the spectacle, not the headline.
• Tabular numerals everywhere.
• Banned: Inter, Roboto, system sans as identity.

Color

• Background: warm off-white (#f4f1ea, #f9fafb, #f6efe2) — never clinical pure white.
• Cards: pure white with a 1px subtle border (rgba(226, 232, 240, 0.5)).
• Border-radius: 2.25rem to 2.5rem (36–40px) — larger than typical card radius. This is part of the bento signature.
• Shadows: diffusion — shadow-[0_18px_36px_-18px_rgba(15,15,15,0.08)]. Soft, never punchy.
• Accent: one only, saturation < 80%. Common picks — emerald, terracotta, slate-blue. Indigo / Violet / Purple banned.
• Pure #000000 banned. Use #0f172a or #181815.

Layout

• CSS Grid for the bento. Never flex-math.
• Default grid: 3-column on md: with col-span-2 for wide archetypes (typically the wide-stream archetype).
• Card internal padding: p-10 (40px) desktop, p-7 (28px) mobile.
• Minimum card height: min-h-[340px] so rows read as rows.
• Inner card radii: rounded-2xl (16px) — half the outer radius. Don't ship rounded-3xl on everything.

Surface

• The card IS the artifact. No nested cards inside.
• Internal dividers: hairline border-stone-100 or border-slate-100.
• No internal scrollbars exposed. Expand the content or paginate.

Mandatory states

Loading: skeleton preserves the card shape. Empty: composed, named, suggests next action. Error: inline, in the card, doesn't replace it. Tactile: whileTap={{ scale: 0.97 }} on every interactive element.

Choreography

Spring presets — the bento language

const SPRING = { type: 'spring', stiffness: 100, damping: 20 } as const;
const SPRING_POP = { type: 'spring', stiffness: 380, damping: 22 } as const;
const TIGHT = { type: 'spring', stiffness: 300, damping: 30 };

Springs everywhere. No linear easing on UI in this direction (linear is only used inside the wide-stream archetype, for the constant-motion carousel).

Hardware acceleration — important

For paths that stay smooth under load (any animation that has to compete with React render):

// NOT hardware-accelerated
<motion.div animate={{ x: 100 }} />

// Hardware-accelerated
<motion.div animate={{ transform: 'translateX(100px)' }} />

Smooth scroll

Lenis is skipped in this direction by default. Native scroll wins on perceived performance for conversion-critical pages.

Tooling

Framer Motion-led. GSAP is not used in this direction. If the brief asks for scroll-driven choreography on top of bento, the brief probably belongs in cinematic-scroll with bento as Act 2.

Accessibility

prefers-reduced-motion disables the perpetual motion in each archetype while preserving the static card layouts. The page should still convert when motion is off.

Wrong-direction tells (slop specific to motion-bento)

Beyond the pack-wide forbidden list at ../references/forbidden.md, avoid:

• Telemetry cards with fake metrics ("99.99% uptime", "10,000+ customers", "50% faster"). Use realistic mixed-precision data ("p95 218ms · −4.1%", "47.2k active rooms").
• Identical card shells. Each archetype should be visually distinct.
• Generic copy ("Powerful features", "Built for teams", "Get started fast"). Use concrete domain language.
• Gradient backgrounds inside cards. Cards stay pure white.
• Lucide icons as the visual language. Use Phosphor or Radix, standardized stroke 1.5 or 2.0.
• rounded-2xl on every element. The card is rounded-[2.5rem]; only inner elements use smaller radii.
• Perpetual motion in a non-memoized parent — kills performance and re-triggers intervals on every render.
• Page structure of "Hero / Features / Pricing / FAQ / CTA" where bento is just one section. That is a generic SaaS page with a nice section. Motion-bento is the page.
• "Trusted by" logo strip at the top. Footer reference only, only with real logos.

What to push toward

• A grid where any single card could be screenshotted and stand alone as a product surface.
• Cards that visibly tick / update / respond on the live page — the user should believe the product is running.
• Concrete time references in the data ("Last 30 minutes · ·LIVE", "Today's session — Coral build 0.247").
• A keyboard hint somewhere ("⌘K from any window") — bento products tend to live keyboard-first.
• One full-width row at the bottom that synthesizes the rest (the contextual-UI archetype): timestamp + author + action lines + floating toolbar.
• A specific named product, audience, and domain. "Morse — sound design library workflow for game studios" beats "ACME Workflow".

Reference artifact

../examples/bento-saas.tsx — Morse, sound design library workflow for game studios. Exercises this direction with all five archetypes wired together:

• Row 1: Library (4-col archetype 1, foley/amb/sfx/voice cues with auto-sort), Render queue (2-col archetype 3 with breathing indicator + event toast).
• Row 2: Tag search (2-col archetype 2, ⌘K typewriter), Cue stream (4-col archetype 4, build numbers + ship/review/reject badges).
• Row 3: Session ledger (6-col archetype 5, timestamped author + floating Replay/Tag/Branch/Ship toolbar).

Read for tone calibration. Each motion-bento page must invent its own product world (audience, domain, real names, real metric shapes).

Pack layers applied on every output in this direction:

• Universal craft: ../references/animation.md (Emil Kowalski canon — popover origin still applies, button press still applies), ../references/forbidden.md (slop filter + pre-flight).
• Component recipes: ../components/style-recipes.md § Motion Bento → opens Framer Motion patterns + Aceternity bento-grid + 21st.dev primitives + shadcn customization rules.