So I built and open-sourced a complete SaaS landing page template called ChatDeck. It runs on Next.js 16, React 19, shadcn/ui with the new base-nova style, Tailwind CSS v4, and TypeScript. The full source is on GitHub under the MIT license. I built and open-sourced this template, and everything here comes from decisions made during that process.

Building it forced me to make real decisions on a stack that moved significantly in the past 12 months. This article is about those decisions: what worked, what didn't, and what I'd do differently if I started today.

Prerequisites: This article assumes you're comfortable with React and TypeScript. Some familiarity with the Next.js App Router is helpful but not required. Each lesson is explained from first principles.

Table of Contents

• The Stack Choices and Why They Matter

• Getting Started

• Project Structure

• Lesson 1: shadcn/ui's Newbase-novaStyle Changes What "Accessible" Means

• Lesson 2: Tailwind CSS v4 Requires a Mental Model Shift

• Lesson 3: OKLCH Colors Make Dark Mode Predictable

• Lesson 4: Page Architecture — Flat Beats Clever

• Lesson 5: Staggered Animations Without Managing Individual Delays

• Lesson 6: CSS-Only Infinite Scroll — No Library Needed

• Lesson 7: CSS Subgrid Solves Pricing Card Alignment Natively

• Lesson 8: Inline SVGs Beat Image Libraries for Simple Logos

• What I'd Do Differently

• Summary

The Stack Choices and Why They Matter

Before getting into the code, here's what the template runs on. Each choice was deliberate — none of these are defaults you get from create-next-app.

The most interesting decisions in this list are the ones that reflect how the ecosystem changed in the past year: Base UI replacing Radix inside shadcn/ui, and Tailwind v4's shift to CSS-first configuration. The lessons below walk through each of these in detail, starting with the choices that had the biggest impact on how the code is actually written.

Getting Started

Before diving into the lessons, here's how to get the project running locally. Having it open alongside this article makes the code examples easier to follow.

git clone https://github.com/ShadcnDeck/chatdeck-shadcn-saas-landing-page-template.git
cd chatdeck-shadcn-saas-landing-page-template
pnpm install
pnpm dev

Open http://localhost:3000 and you'll see the full landing page running locally.

All section content lives as plain TypeScript arrays inside each Block component. To change the features, edit the features array in FeatureSection.tsx. To change pricing tiers, edit the plans array in PricingSection.tsx. No CMS, no config files — just TypeScript objects.

To customize colors, update the OKLCH values in app/globals.css under the :root block. Change --primary and every button, link, and accent color updates across the entire template.

Deploy to Vercel with a single vercel command or by pushing to GitHub and connecting the repo. Next.js is detected automatically.

Project Structure

Here's the full directory layout before we go through each part of it:

chatdeck/
├── app/
│   ├── globals.css         # Theme tokens + custom animations (Tailwind v4 @theme)
│   ├── layout.tsx          # Root layout — Navbar, Footer, fonts
│   └── page.tsx            # Section imports — 16 lines
├── components/
│   ├── Blocks/             # Page sections (Hero, Features, Pricing, etc.)
│   ├── ui/                 # shadcn/ui components — base-nova style
│   └── navbar.tsx          # Scroll-aware sticky navbar
└── lib/
    └── utils.ts            # cn() helper (clsx + tailwind-merge)

The key separation is Blocks/ vs ui/. The ui/ folder holds primitive components — Button, Badge, Accordion — that come from shadcn/ui and rarely change. The Blocks/ folder holds page-level sections that are specific to this template and change often. When you're customising, you mostly work in Blocks/. When you upgrade shadcn/ui components, you touch ui/.

The lessons below go through specific files in this structure piece by piece: components.json and ui/accordion.tsx in Lesson 1, app/globals.css in Lessons 2 and 3, app/page.tsx in Lesson 4, and the individual Block components in Lessons 5 through 8.

Lesson 1: shadcn/ui's New base-nova Style Changes What "Accessible" Means

If you've used shadcn/ui before, you know the default setup uses Radix UI primitives, headless components that handle focus management, keyboard navigation, and ARIA attributes. Radix has been the default for years.

But shadcn/ui introduced a new style in 2025 called base-nova, which replaces Radix with Base UI, the headless primitive library from MUI.

Based on shadcn's public direction and the components released through 2025, base-nova appears to be the intended default going forward (though shadcn hasn't yet deprecated the Radix style).

In the project's components.json:

{
  "$schema": "https://ui.shadcn.com/schema.json",
  "style": "base-nova",
  "rsc": true,
  "tsx": true,
  "tailwind": {
    "css": "app/globals.css",
    "baseColor": "neutral",
    "cssVariables": true
  },
  "iconLibrary": "lucide"
}

The "style": "base-nova" line means every component the shadcn/ui CLI installs wraps Base UI primitives instead of Radix. To understand what this changes in practice, here's what the same Accordion trigger component looks like in the older Radix-based default style:

// Radix-based default style (the old way)
import * as AccordionPrimitive from "@radix-ui/react-accordion"

const AccordionTrigger = React.forwardRef<
  React.ElementRef<typeof AccordionPrimitive.Trigger>,
  React.ComponentPropsWithoutRef<typeof AccordionPrimitive.Trigger>
>(({ className, children, ...props }, ref) => {
  const [isOpen, setIsOpen] = React.useState(false)

  return (
    <AccordionPrimitive.Header className="flex">
      <AccordionPrimitive.Trigger
        ref={ref}
        className={cn("flex flex-1 items-center justify-between ...", className)}
        onClick={() => setIsOpen(!isOpen)}
        {...props}
      >
        {children}
        <ChevronDownIcon
          className={cn(
            "h-4 w-4 shrink-0 transition-transform duration-200",
            isOpen ? "hidden" : "block"
          )}
        />
        <ChevronUpIcon
          className={cn(
            "h-4 w-4 shrink-0 transition-transform duration-200",
            isOpen ? "block" : "hidden"
          )}
        />
      </AccordionPrimitive.Trigger>
    </AccordionPrimitive.Header>
  )
})

Notice the useState(false) tracking whether the accordion is open, and the onClick handler that toggles it. This means the component has to manually keep its own isOpen state in sync with what Radix internally knows about the open/closed state.

Now here's the same component using the base-nova style with Base UI:

// components/ui/accordion.tsx — base-nova style (the new way)
import { Accordion as AccordionPrimitive } from "@base-ui/react/accordion"

function AccordionTrigger({ className, children, ...props }: AccordionPrimitive.Trigger.Props) {
  return (
    <AccordionPrimitive.Header className="flex">
      <AccordionPrimitive.Trigger
        data-slot="accordion-trigger"
        className={cn(
          "group/accordion-trigger relative flex flex-1 items-start ...",
          className
        )}
        {...props}
      >
        {children}
        <ChevronDownIcon
          className="pointer-events-none shrink-0 group-aria-expanded/accordion-trigger:hidden"
        />
        <ChevronUpIcon
          className="pointer-events-none hidden shrink-0 group-aria-expanded/accordion-trigger:inline"
        />
      </AccordionPrimitive.Trigger>
    </AccordionPrimitive.Header>
  )
}

No useState. No onClick. No isOpen variable. The chevron visibility is controlled entirely by group-aria-expanded/accordion-trigger:hidden — a Tailwind class that reads the aria-expanded attribute Base UI sets automatically on the trigger element.

The lesson here: in the Radix version, you have two parallel systems: the component's own isOpen state, and the ARIA attributes that the library manages separately for screen readers. These can drift out of sync — for example, if the accordion closes via keyboard navigation, the ARIA state updates correctly but your isOpen state doesn't unless you wire up the right callbacks. In the Base UI version, there is only one system. ARIA state IS the state. Tailwind reads it directly. There's nothing to keep in sync and nothing that can drift.

Lesson: use the primitive library's ARIA attributes as your source of truth for visual state. If your headless component library already sets aria-expanded, aria-selected, or aria-checked, Tailwind can respond to those directly with aria-* variant classes — no parallel JavaScript state needed.

So when you install shadcn/ui today, choose base-nova over the default Radix style. You get tighter Base UI integration, a smaller peer dependency footprint, and components that are more aligned with where the ecosystem is moving.

Lesson 2: Tailwind CSS v4 Requires a Mental Model Shift

Tailwind CSS v4 moves primary theme configuration out of the JavaScript config file and into CSS. This sounds small. In practice, it changes how you think about the entire theming system.

In Tailwind v3, you'd extend the theme in tailwind.config.js:

// OLD — tailwind.config.js (v3)
module.exports = {
  theme: {
    extend: {
      animation: {
        marquee: "marquee 40s linear infinite",
      },
      keyframes: {
        marquee: {
          from: { transform: "translateX(0)" },
          to: { transform: "translateX(calc(-100% - var(--gap)))" },
        },
      },
    },
  },
}

In Tailwind v4, that same configuration lives in your CSS file instead:

/* app/globals.css — Tailwind v4 */
@import "tailwindcss";

@theme inline {
  --animate-marquee: marquee var(--duration) infinite linear;
  --animate-marquee-vertical: marquee-vertical var(--duration) linear infinite;

  @keyframes marquee {
    from { transform: translateX(0); }
    to   { transform: translateX(calc(-100% - var(--gap))); }
  }

  --radius-2xl: calc(var(--radius) * 1.8);
  --radius-3xl: calc(var(--radius) * 2.2);
  --radius-4xl: calc(var(--radius) * 2.6);
}

The @theme inline block extends Tailwind's design token system. Define --animate-marquee here and you can use className="animate-marquee" anywhere in your components. Tailwind generates the utility class automatically from the CSS variable.

Custom animations, radius scales, and color tokens all live in CSS now. The benefit is that CSS is where styles belong. The config file was always an indirection layer between "what I want my design system to look like" and "where that actually lives." Tailwind v4 removes the indirection.

The friction: if you start a Tailwind v4 project with a v3 mental model, you'll spend time looking for theme config in the wrong place. Read the v4 migration guide before you start, not after you're confused.

Lesson: move your mental model of "theme config" from JavaScript to CSS. In Tailwind v4, if you want a custom animation, a new radius scale, or a color token, define it in @theme inline inside globals.css. That's where it belongs, and that's where every developer on your team will find it.

Lesson 3: OKLCH Colors Make Dark Mode Predictable

The template uses OKLCH color values throughout, not hex or HSL:

:root {
  --background: oklch(1 0 0);        /* white */
  --foreground: oklch(0.145 0 0);    /* near-black */
  --primary: oklch(0.205 0 0);
  --border: oklch(0.922 0 0);
}

.dark {
  --background: oklch(0.145 0 0);    /* near-black */
  --foreground: oklch(0.985 0 0);    /* near-white */
  --primary: oklch(0.922 0 0);
  --border: oklch(1 0 0 / 10%);      /* white at 10% opacity */
}

OKLCH is a perceptually uniform color space. When you increase the lightness value in OKLCH, the color actually looks lighter to human eyes, consistently. Hex and HSL don't guarantee this. You can increase the L in HSL and get a color that looks the same or even darker depending on the hue.

For dark mode specifically, this matters because you're inverting a whole color system. With HSL, you'll often end up manually tweaking individual color values until contrast ratios look right. With OKLCH, increasing or decreasing the lightness value gives you predictable results across all your tokens.

The dark mode switch itself is zero JavaScript. Adding class="dark" to the <html> element swaps every CSS variable. Tailwind reads the updated variables and re-renders every component. There's no context provider and no useTheme hook needed for the CSS layer — just a class toggle on the root element.

Lesson: swap your color tokens to OKLCH. When defining dark mode values, adjust the first OKLCH parameter (lightness) and the result will look predictably lighter or darker. With hex or HSL you're often guessing; with OKLCH you're reasoning.

Lesson 4: Page Architecture — Flat Beats Clever

The main page file is 16 lines:

// app/page.tsx
import Hero from "@/components/Blocks/Hero";
import { LogoCarousel } from "@/components/Blocks/LogoCarousel";
import { FeatureSection } from "@/components/Blocks/FeatureSection";
import { TeamSection } from "@/components/Blocks/TeamSection";
import { TestimonialSection } from "@/components/Blocks/TestimonialSection";
import { PricingSection } from "@/components/Blocks/PricingSection";
import { FaqSection } from "@/components/Blocks/FaqSection";

export default function Home() {
  return (
    <main className="min-h-screen bg-white dark:bg-black">
      <div className="mx-auto max-w-7xl px-6 pt-40">
        <Hero />
        <LogoCarousel />
        <FeatureSection />
        <TeamSection />
        <TestimonialSection />
        <PricingSection />
        <FaqSection />
      </div>
    </main>
  );
}

No dynamic imports, no lazy-loading config, no context providers wrapping everything. Each section is a completely self-contained component in components/Blocks/. None of them import from each other.

This decision came from watching how developers actually use shadcn templates. The first thing anyone does after cloning is delete the sections they don't need and reorder the ones they keep. With flat imports, removing the Team section is one deleted line. Reordering sections is moving one line. Adding a new section is creating a file and adding one import.

The alternative (a sections array, a renderer loop, a config file that controls order) sounds sophisticated. In practice, it adds indirection that makes the template harder to understand and slower to customize. Templates should be obvious, not impressive.

Lesson: in a template context, the simplest architecture is the correct architecture. The developer cloning your template isn't impressed by abstraction. They want to understand the code fast and change it faster.

Lesson 5: Staggered Animations Without Managing Individual Delays

The Hero section uses entrance animations where each element fades up sequentially: badge first, then heading, then subheading, then CTA. The naïve approach sets a different delay prop on each element manually. The correct approach uses staggerChildren:

// components/Blocks/Hero.tsx
"use client"
import { motion, type Variants } from "motion/react"

const containerVariants: Variants = {
  hidden: { opacity: 0 },
  visible: {
    opacity: 1,
    transition: {
      staggerChildren: 0.15,  // each child animates 150ms after the previous
      delayChildren: 0.1,
    },
  },
}

const fadeUpVariants: Variants = {
  hidden: { opacity: 0, y: 20 },
  visible: {
    opacity: 1,
    y: 0,
    transition: { duration: 0.5, ease: "easeOut" },
  },
}

const Hero = () => (
  <motion.div variants={containerVariants} initial="hidden" animate="visible">
    <motion.div variants={fadeUpVariants}>
      {/* Badge */}
    </motion.div>
    <motion.h1 variants={fadeUpVariants}>
      AI Chatbot for Customer Support.
    </motion.h1>
    <motion.p variants={fadeUpVariants}>
      {/* Subheading */}
    </motion.p>
    <motion.div variants={fadeUpVariants}>
      {/* CTA */}
    </motion.div>
  </motion.div>
)

The parent defines staggerChildren: 0.15. Every child with variants={fadeUpVariants} automatically inherits a 150ms offset from the previous child. Want to add a new element? Give it variants={fadeUpVariants} and the stagger chain extends automatically. No manually updated delay values.

The Features section uses scroll-triggered animations with a different easing:

// components/Blocks/FeatureSection.tsx
<motion.div
  initial={{ opacity: 0, y: 40 }}
  whileInView={{ opacity: 1, y: 0 }}
  viewport={{ once: true, amount: 0.3 }}
  transition={{
    duration: 0.5,
    delay: index * 0.15,
    ease: [0.22, 1, 0.36, 1],
  }}
>

viewport={{ once: true }} fires the animation once when the element enters the viewport, not on every scroll pass. amount: 0.3 starts the animation when 30% of the element is visible, not when the full element is on screen. The cubic bezier [0.22, 1, 0.36, 1] is a fast-out-slow-in curve that feels physical rather than mechanical.

Quick note on the import: most of the core API is compatible, but motion/react isn't a straight drop-in rename of framer-motion. If you're upgrading an existing project, check the official migration guide before swapping the import. Layout animations, AnimatePresence behaviour, and some hooks changed.

Lesson: define animation variants at the parent level and use staggerChildren to orchestrate the sequence. Never set delay manually on individual elements — that creates a brittle list of numbers you have to update every time you add or remove an element. Let the parent handle timing; let children just declare what they animate to.

Lesson 6: CSS-Only Infinite Scroll — No Library Needed

The testimonials use a dual-row auto-scrolling marquee. The second row scrolls in reverse. There's no third-party marquee package. It's a small component built entirely on CSS animations defined in Tailwind v4's @theme block.

// components/ui/marquee.tsx
export function Marquee({
  reverse = false,
  pauseOnHover = false,
  vertical = false,
  children,
  repeat = 4,
  ...props
}) {
  return (
    <div className="group flex gap-(--gap) overflow-hidden [--duration:40s] [--gap:2rem]">
      {Array(repeat).fill(0).map((_, i) => (
        <div
          key={i}
          className={cn("flex shrink-0 justify-around gap-(--gap)", {
            "animate-marquee flex-row": !vertical,
            "group-hover:paused": pauseOnHover,
            "[animation-direction:reverse]": reverse,
          })}
        >
          {children}
        </div>
      ))}
    </div>
  )
}

The repeat={4} prop renders the children 4 times side by side. As the CSS animation scrolls the container left, the repetitions create a seamless loop. By the time the first set has scrolled off screen, the second set is already in position.

group-hover:paused is Tailwind applying animation-play-state: paused when the parent has group class and is hovered. No onMouseEnter/onMouseLeave handlers or state, just pure CSS.

To customize the scroll speed without touching the component source, you override the CSS variable inline:

<Marquee pauseOnHover className="[--duration:20s]">
  {items.map(item => <Card key={item.id} {...item} />)}
</Marquee>

[--duration:20s] is a Tailwind arbitrary property. It sets --duration directly on the element, which the animation reads via var(--duration). Speed customization without a prop, without touching the component.

Lesson: before reaching for a third-party animation package, check whether a CSS keyframe animation and a couple of Tailwind utilities can do the same job. A marquee, a fade loop, a pulsing skeleton — all of these are achievable with native CSS. Fewer dependencies means fewer breaking changes when the ecosystem moves.

Lesson 7: CSS Subgrid Solves Pricing Card Alignment Natively

The pricing section has three cards: Free, Pro, and Business. Each card has four rows: plan name, price, CTA button, and features list. The features list height varies between plans. Without CSS subgrid, the rows don't align across cards.

The common workaround is min-height on each row, or JavaScript that measures each card and sets explicit heights. Both approaches are fragile. Subgrid solves it in CSS:

// components/Blocks/PricingSection.tsx
<div className="grid lg:grid-cols-3">
  {plans.map((plan) => (
    <div className="p-8 grid grid-rows-subgrid row-span-4 gap-6">
      <div>{/* Plan name + description */}</div>
      <div>{/* Price */}</div>
      <div>{/* CTA button */}</div>
      <div>{/* Features list */}</div>
    </div>
  ))}
</div>

grid-rows-subgrid tells each card to participate in the parent grid's row tracks rather than creating its own. Each card spans 4 rows (row-span-4). The plan name row, price row, CTA row, and features row align across all three cards (regardless of content height) because they're all on the same row tracks.

Each card's row-span-4 reserves four rows in the parent's implicit grid. Because every card spans the same four shared row tracks, their internal rows align automatically even though the parent never declares explicit row heights.

CSS subgrid has been in all modern browsers since late 2023. There's no reason to reach for a JavaScript layout solution when the platform handles it.

Lesson: when you have a grid of cards where each card has multiple internal rows that need to align across columns, reach for grid-rows-subgrid before reaching for min-height or JavaScript. Define the number of rows each card spans with row-span-N, and the browser handles the rest.

Lesson 8: Inline SVGs Beat Image Libraries for Simple Logos

The logo carousel renders 12 brand logos: Shopify, Stripe, GitHub, Google, and others. The first instinct is to use a package like react-icons or simple-icons. I went a different direction: inline SVG paths stored as a plain TypeScript object.

// components/Blocks/LogoCarousel.tsx
const iconMap = {
  stripe: "M13.976 9.15c-2.172-.806...",
  github: "M12 .297c-6.63 0-12...",
  google: "M12.48 10.92v3.28h7.84...",
  // ...
} as const

const SimpleIcon = ({ iconSlug, size = 24 }: { iconSlug: string; size?: number }) => {
  const iconPath = iconMap[iconSlug as keyof typeof iconMap]
  return (
    <svg role="img" viewBox="0 0 24 24" className="fill-black dark:fill-white">
      <path d={iconPath} />
    </svg>
  )
}

The fill-black dark:fill-white class means every logo automatically inverts in dark mode: no separate dark mode logo assets, and no conditional rendering based on theme.

The carousel itself duplicates the logo array to create a seamless loop:

{/* First pass */}
{techCompanies.map((company, i) => <LogoCard key={`first-${i}`} {...company} />)}
{/* Second pass — identical, creates the seamless loop */}
{techCompanies.map((company, i) => <LogoCard key={`second-${i}`} {...company} />)}

The CSS animation (animate-logo-scroll) scrolls the container left. When the first pass disappears off the left edge, the second pass is already in position. The loop is seamless.

The trade-off: maintaining SVG paths manually is fine for a fixed set of logos. If you need a large dynamic icon set, reach for simple-icons or a proper icon library. For 12 brand logos that rarely change, this approach ships zero extra dependencies.

Lesson: match your tooling to your actual requirements. A logo carousel with a fixed set of brand logos doesn't need an icon library — it needs a TypeScript object and two Tailwind classes. Installing a package to solve a problem you could solve with 10 lines of code adds maintenance surface for no gain.

What I'd Do Differently

These are the three decisions I'd change if starting the template today.

1. Extract Animation Variants to a Shared File

containerVariants and fadeUpVariants are currently defined locally in both Hero.tsx and FeatureSection.tsx. If you want to change the global animation timing (say, reduce duration from 0.5s to 0.3s) you update two files. A shared lib/animations.ts exporting the standard variants would make global timing changes a one-line edit.

// lib/animations.ts
export const fadeUpVariants: Variants = {
  hidden: { opacity: 0, y: 20 },
  visible: { opacity: 1, y: 0, transition: { duration: 0.5, ease: "easeOut" } },
}

export const containerVariants: Variants = {
  hidden: { opacity: 0 },
  visible: { opacity: 1, transition: { staggerChildren: 0.15, delayChildren: 0.1 } },
}

2. Use Subgrid in the Features Section Too

The Features grid uses a border-based visual separation pattern — borders between cells create the grid appearance. It works, but the hover states have an inconsistency: the gradient hover overlay height varies slightly between cells in the same row because content heights differ. Subgrid would lock those row heights across cards the same way it does in the Pricing section.

3. Use next/font More Consistently

The layout loads both Geist and Inter font families. Inter is used via --font-sans. Geist is loaded but the geistSans.variable and geistMono.variable are applied to <body> as className strings while Inter drives the actual font rendering through the CSS variable. The result is that Geist is loaded but not actually displayed. Cleaning this up could shave tens of kilobytes from the font payload — worth verifying in Lighthouse or the Network tab before deploying.

Summary

These are the five things from this build worth taking into your next project:

1. shadcn/ui's base-nova style runs on Base UI primitives. ARIA state drives visual state — no parallel JavaScript state needed.

2. Tailwind v4 moves theme config to CSS. All theme tokens, custom animations, and radius scales live in CSS via @theme inline. This is the right place for them.

3. OKLCH gives predictable dark mode contrast. Adjusting lightness in OKLCH actually changes perceived brightness. Hex and HSL don't guarantee this.

4. staggerChildren in motion/react eliminates manually managed animation delays. The parent orchestrates while the children just declare their animation variant.

5. CSS subgrid (grid-rows-subgrid) aligns card rows across columns natively. No JavaScript measurement, no fixed heights.

The full template is MIT-licensed and available at github.com/ShadcnDeck/chatdeck-shadcn-saas-landing-page-template. If it's useful, a star helps others find it.