Particles

Particles is a UI toolkit designed to answer the following question: "Now that LLMs can generate UI code, what's the right way to do this"? The word "right" is load bearing here and contains various intuitions and practices that guide the overall design -- aka "the Opinion".

Opinion

The following assertions comprise the guiding principles of the toolkit design:

• Sandbox the LLM -- Code that is generated by LLMs will have to be sandboxed to run safely. More specifically and as applies to the UI, code that drives UI:
  • must be able to do so asynchronously (though with minimal latency) from the code that renders UI;
  • must not be able to operate directly on the UI.
• Separate of presentation and logic -- The oldie-but-goodie from HTML, but now with feeling. Code that renders UI must have control in how UI is presented. Code that drives UI must be able to provide the semantics of what it's trying to convey, but not the exact rendering.
• Prefer on concrete use cases -- use the concrete use cases from implementations (like the Breadboard project) to inform priorities and overall shape of design. Theoretical explorations are great, but practical problems are better.

Overall Approach

Because the sandbox is the key design constraint, it figures prominently in the overall approach. Very loosely speaking, Particles splits the typical MVC into two chunks:

• Model + Controller, which is located inside of the sandbox
• View, which is located outside of the sandbox.