What is the Palette Library?

The Palette Library is the public Auric Artisan browser for 5,000,000 deterministic scientific color palettes. It loads a compact manifest from /data/palette-db/palettes.json and regenerates only the palettes in view, an analysis sample, the selected palette and saved palettes in the browser.

Why does it use a compact manifest?

An expanded 5,000,000-palette JSON file would be several gigabytes. The compact manifest stores count, seed, batch size, stride, methods and color count so the browser can materialize the same palettes on demand.

What can the Palette Library export?

Selected palettes export as HEX lists, CSS variables, SCSS variables, Tailwind fragments, JSON, ASE, SVG, PNG, Coolors links and design tokens. The analysis sample exports as JSON, compact JSON, CSV, CSS, SCSS, Tailwind and plain HEX lists.

Palette Library User Guide

1. What the Palette Library is

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The Palette Library is the public browser for Auric Artisan's deterministic palette corpus. It lives at /library/palette/ and reads /data/palette-db/palettes.json, a compact manifest generated from @auric-artisan/palette-gen.

The page does not download five million full palette objects. Instead, it stores the dataset recipe and regenerates visible palettes from seed, batch size, batch stride and palette index. This keeps the page fast while still making a stable 5,000,000-palette collection browsable.

Primary route: /library/palette/.
Main data: /data/palette-db/palettes.json.
Current count: 5,000,000 deterministic palettes.
Colors per palette: 5 colors.
Methods: complementary, triadic, analogous, tetradic, golden_ratio, random and monochromatic.
Common uses: brand exploration, UI palette selection, accessibility review, design-token export, color study and palette inspiration.

2. Start the workflow

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Open Palette Library. All seven tabs are available from the start: Library, Inspect, Harmony, Accessibility, Stats, Export and Saved.

Scroll through the generated palettes.
Click any palette card to inspect it.
Use search and filters to explore ids, HEX values, hue, chroma, lightness and method.
Open Harmony, Accessibility and Stats to compare a sample of the current results.
Export a selected palette or the analysis sample in the format your project needs.

Press / to focus search. Use Open a random palette when you want a fast jump into the full corpus without scrolling.

3. Browse palette cards

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The Library tab uses a card grid. Each card shows a five-color strip, palette id, generation method and quick actions for Inspect, Copy and Save.

Palette id: ids use the form pal_ plus the base-36 palette index, such as pal_0 or pal_abc.
Swatches: click a swatch to copy that color's HEX value.
Copy: copies all five palette HEX values.
Inspect: opens the full metrics view for that palette.
Save: pins the palette locally and mirrors it to the Library workspace.

There are no pages: the grid scrolls, and the page only materializes the palettes in view, which is why the full collection remains responsive. The scrollbar cannot span all five million, so search an id for the rest.

4. Search, filter and sort

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Palette Library has two different search behaviors: exact id lookup and filtering that scans the collection.

Exact id: entering pal_... or a numeric index jumps to that exact palette if it is inside the 5,000,000-palette range.
HEX search: scans the collection in order and keeps palettes with a matching color.
Method search: scans the collection in order and keeps palettes with a matching method.

Control	What It Does
`Hue`	Filters by dominant OKLCH hue bucket: red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple or pink.
`Chroma`	Filters muted palettes below 0.07 average chroma, balanced palettes from 0.07 to 0.15 and vivid palettes above 0.15.
`Lightness`	Filters dark palettes below 0.40 average OKLCH lightness, mid palettes from 0.40 to 0.70 and light palettes above 0.70.
`Method`	Keeps palettes from the chosen generator method without expanding the full dataset.
`Sort`	Sorts a bounded scan of the results by original id, lightness, chroma, hue or random order; the counter says how many palettes it looked at.

Hue, chroma, lightness, method and HEX search scan the full virtual corpus in chunks as you scroll. Sorting orders a bounded scan, and exact id lookup can address any palette.

5. Inspect palette metrics

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Inspect turns a card into a complete technical palette report. It opens when you click a card, press Enter or Space on a focused card, or use Random.

Palette strip: shows five swatches with readable text color labels.
Summary: shows palette id, global index, method, color count, average OKLCH lightness, average chroma, hue span, Delta E average, entropy, minimum pair contrast and maximum pair contrast.
Harmony label: categorizes the palette as Neutral, Diverse, Triadic, Analogous or Monochrome from chroma and hue spread.
Per-color cards: show HEX, RGB, OKLCH, CIE L*a*b*, WCAG contrast against white and WCAG contrast against black.
Pair contrast list: shows contrast between every color pair in the palette.
Quick export: provides copy, download, Coolors, save, share and design token actions.

Use the pair contrast list when choosing foreground/background combinations from a palette. Use the Lab and OKLCH values when you need perceptual comparison, not just HEX output.

6. Read accessibility and contrast

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Palette Library computes WCAG-style contrast ratios between palette colors and against white and black. The Accessibility panel summarizes a sample of up to 2,000 palettes under the current filter.

Any AA pair: palettes where at least one internal pair reaches 4.5:1.
Any AAA pair: palettes where at least one internal pair reaches 7:1.
Pair-level breakdown: counts AAA pairs, AA pairs and pairs below AA across the sample.
Mutually legible sets: counts how many of each palette's colors can all be used on each other at 4.5:1 (sRGB allows at most three) and lists the most usable palettes.
White/black checks: per-color cards show contrast against white and black for practical text decisions.

The Accessibility panel assumes five colors per palette, so a visible palette has ten internal pair comparisons. Always confirm real text size, font weight and UI state before shipping.

7. Use harmony, stats and saved panels

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Panel	Purpose
`Harmony`	Summarizes visible palettes by generation method, dominant hue bucket, harmony classification and chroma/lightness profile.
`Accessibility`	Summarizes WCAG pair coverage, mutually legible sets and the most usable palettes in the sample.
`Stats`	Shows histograms for average lightness, average chroma, hue spread and best pair contrast.
`Export`	Copies or downloads the active selected palette and bulk exports the analysis sample.
`Saved`	Shows locally pinned palettes and links to the Library workspace.

The analysis panels describe a sample of up to 2,000 palettes taken under the current filter. Set filters first, then open Harmony, Accessibility and Stats to compare a meaningful set.

8. Export palettes and design tokens

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Palette Library supports selected-palette exports and bulk exports of the analysis sample: up to 2,000 palettes that match the current search and filters, the same sample the Harmony, Accessibility and Stats panels measure.

Export	Scope	Use Case
`HEX list`	Selected or sample	Quick paste into design tools, docs and tickets.
`CSS variables`	Selected or sample	Prototype themes using custom properties such as `--pal_abc-1`.
`SCSS`	Selected or sample	Sass variable systems.
`Tailwind`	Selected or sample	Tailwind color extension fragments or config snippets.
`JSON`	Selected or sample	Application data, audits and internal palette catalogs.
`CSV`	Analysis sample	Spreadsheet review of palette id, method and five colors.
`ASE`	Selected	Adobe Swatch Exchange import into design software.
`SVG`	Selected	Vector palette strip for documentation and review.
`PNG`	Selected	Raster palette strip for quick sharing.
`Design tokens`	Selected	Token-dialog export with a prefix such as `brand`.
`Coolors`	Selected	Opens the selected palette as a Coolors URL.

Production tokens should be renamed for semantic use. For example, replace generic brand-1 style names with names such as surface, accent, success or text-muted when the palette becomes part of a product system.

9. Save, share and reuse

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Save pins a palette in the current browser and mirrors it into the Auric Artisan Library workspace with an image preview.

Local saved key: aa.palette.saved.
Local saved limit: 500 palette ids.
Workspace domain: palette.
Workspace tool id: library-palette.
Share type: palette.
Shared payload: palette id, method and uppercase HEX colors.

Share links resolve by palette id against the current deterministic manifest. If the manifest seed, count, batch size or stride changes in the future, old ids may point to different colors.

10. Understand the manifest

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The public data file is a deterministic manifest, not expanded palette data. The current manifest records these values:

Field	Current Value
`schema`	`aa.palette-db.compact.v1`
`format`	`deterministic-palette-gen-manifest`
`source`	`@auric-artisan/palette-gen`
`count`	`5000000`
`colors_per_palette`	`5`
`seed`	`42`
`batch_size`	`50000`
`batch_seed_stride`	`2654435761`

The manifest also records that the old expanded data size was 3,893,080,945 bytes. The compact format avoids shipping that multi-GB payload and keeps the page practical for real users.

11. Good practice and limits

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Use exact palette ids when you need to return to a known palette.
Use Random for exploration across the full corpus.
Use Method filtering when you want predictable harmony families.
Remember that hue, chroma, lightness and HEX filters scan the collection in order, so a rare filter can take a long scroll to fill.
Check pair contrast before using two palette colors as text and background.
Use JSON or CSS for implementation, SVG or PNG for reviews and ASE for design software.
Save promising palettes before changing filters, sort order or scroll position.
Rename exported design tokens before shipping them in a production product system.

For generator internals, see the Palette Gen Developer Reference. For this browser's implementation, see the Palette Library Developer Reference.