Show HN: I reverse engineered top websites to build an animated UI library
156 armedin 102 4/24/2025, 5:47:09 PM reverseui.com ↗
Looking at websites such as Clerk, I began thinking that design engineers might be some kind of wizards. I wanted to understand how they do it, so I started reverse-engineering their components out of curiosity. One thing led to another, and I ended up building a small library of reusable, animated components based on what I found. The library is built in React and Framer Motion. I’d love to hear your feedback
Five years ago I could understand the appeal and appreciate the effort required. Today, it’s a matter of seeing others work, taking a screenshot, asking ai to recreate it, and then packaging it into a “library” and selling it for $50.
Maybe I’m alone in the sentiment, but it just rubs me the wrong way.
Made my day. At least they have guts. I give them that.
Can't disagree more. You can almost always have both, performance optimization is a thing.
Their X profile proudly displays "UK-based" while conveniently ignoring basic UK business regulations: no company information, no proper invoicing, no VAT details for B2B sales, and mysteriously missing business address requirements.
Looks suspiciously like someone running an under-the-table operation, courting legal trouble not just from the original designers they're "inspired by," but from Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs who tend to take a rather dim view of tax avoidance.
Not being VAT registered when starting out is not necessarily a sign of a tax dodge.
Nitpick: the "H" in HMRC stands for "His", since it always changes to match the current monarch.
i pay $50 for nothing :(
There are 3-4 components which haven't been synced yet (cannot copy the raw code from the site), one being DataFeedingIn component. You can still access the code through Github.
Are these easy to include in Astro? I'd think so (avoiding React etc.) I am currently building with Astro and keeping things as minimal in terms of additional JS files etc as possible.
Couple of notes / questions:
* https://reverseui.com/craft/text-blur-reveal has 'coming soon' from last October, and it's really cool, I'd be tempted to buy it for this alone
* The top of your site has what looks like the dot logo component, but showing numbers and with a Matrix-like effect. Can that be a component too?
* How customisable are these? I saw one comment saying they were not at all and the code was not modifiable. That's a deal-breaker: we all want our own spin on things, not to copy blindly.
But specifically "reverse engineered"? There is liability there.
Fancy animations is all well and good until you start making the website unusable for people who need screen readers, etc
Still doesn't make sense to me why the magic wand just points to the home page (I would have assumed it meant "edit this UI component), the robot links to a profile page (mine? requires login so didn't try), the envelope points to x.com (I expected an envelope for "email this to a friend"), and the crescent moon toggles between light/dark mode (obvious only in retrospect).
- React - check
- Framer Motion - check
This hit the spot for me.
If you want to spend time building your own library, like OP has , and release it , god speed — that is if you can. In the meanwhile, OP actually spent energy to build and launch something, which is commendable.
I do not believe in an afterlife, but if I did, I would hope that there is a special place in hell for people like that.
lol, Do you believe every idea you have is entirely original? Also, whats with the hell speak? grow up.
Appreciate the feedback though; it's a valid concern.
on the minecraft tips app, you are paying money for something that saves you time.
on this one, you are paying for the same thing here, unless you wanna reimplement it by your own.
and there are lots of avenues to have an edge, such as support for other framework / libraries, better / more efficient implementation, more configurability / control on possible variants.
please don't shoot down people on their attempts to make a living on their efforts.
Jokes aside, I do think the OP does deserve credit for at least putting in the effort to reimplement ideas on the web even if the design ideas aren't theirs.
UI animations and needless "glitz" is inconsiderate of low-vision users, users who might have poor technical skills and who rely on UI consistency to accomplish tasks, users with low-spec hardware, users who are forced to use remote framebuffer protocols over low bandwidth connections, and of the environment (by way of increased processing power and electricity required).
$instance_of_some_witty_template
The trend is there because the majority of humans obviously enjoys moving pixels. If you don't you just need to accept it.