Typography

The foundation of every readable surface. <Typography> collapses the visual scale, the semantic HTML tag, and the intent color into a single typed prop set — so every heading and every paragraph in your app reads from the same source of truth.

import { Typography } from '@dashforge/tw';

<Typography variant="h1">Workspace settings</Typography>
<Typography variant="body1" color="muted">Control access and notifications.</Typography>

Quick Start

<Typography variant="h2" gutterBottom>Profile</Typography>
<Typography variant="body1">
  Update your display name, email, and notification preferences below.
</Typography>

<Typography variant="caption" color="muted">
  Last updated 2 days ago
</Typography>

The default variant is body1 → renders a <p>. Default color is inherit so Typography painted inside a <Box variant="solid" color="primary"> reads white without configuration.

Examples

Full variant scale

import { Typography, Stack } from '@dashforge/tw';

<Stack gap={2}>
  <Typography variant="h2">Heading 2 — section</Typography>
  <Typography variant="h4">Heading 4 — subsection</Typography>
  <Typography variant="subtitle1">Subtitle 1 — emphasized lead</Typography>
  <Typography variant="body1">
    Body 1 — primary prose paragraph for long-form reading.
  </Typography>
  <Typography variant="body2" color="muted">
    Body 2 — dense secondary text for helper lines.
  </Typography>
  <Typography variant="overline">OVERLINE — SECTION KICKER</Typography>
</Stack>

Headings get font-bold (h1, h2) or font-semibold (h3–h6) by default; body and subtitle stay normal/medium; overline gets uppercase + wide tracking automatically.

Intent color

import { Typography, Stack } from '@dashforge/tw';

<Stack gap={1}>
  <Typography color="primary">Primary — calls-to-action accent</Typography>
  <Typography color="success">Success — saved · just now</Typography>
  <Typography color="warning">Warning — 3 days until your trial ends</Typography>
  <Typography color="danger">Danger — required field</Typography>
  <Typography color="muted">Muted — last seen 4 hours ago</Typography>
</Stack>

muted is the workhorse for secondary text — helper lines, captions, "last updated" labels. inherit is the escape: inside any container that paints its own color, leave Typography untouched and it reads cleanly.

Override weight per-instance

The variant baked-in weight is just a default. When you want "an h2 styled like h2 but lighter":

<Typography variant="h2" weight="normal">
  Subtle heading
</Typography>

tailwind-merge resolves the conflict — the font-normal from weight wins over the variant's font-bold.

Truncation

<div className="w-48">
  <Typography truncate>
    This is a very long string that will collapse to a one-line ellipsis…
  </Typography>
</div>

truncate enables text-ellipsis + overflow-hidden + whitespace-nowrap in one prop. For one-line WITHOUT ellipsis (rare — usually for status badges), use noWrap instead.

Alignment + gutter

<Typography variant="h2" align="center" gutterBottom>
  Welcome back
</Typography>
<Typography variant="body1" align="center" color="muted">
  Pick up where you left off.
</Typography>

gutterBottom adds mb-3 — the canonical bottom margin between a heading and its following paragraph. Mirror of MUI's same flag, familiar muscle memory.

Semantic level ≠ visual level

Sometimes the heading hierarchy of the page should differ from the visual hierarchy of the section. The as prop swaps the tag while keeping the variant's visuals:

<Typography variant="h1" as="h2">
  Looks like h1, but in the page outline this is an h2.
</Typography>

Useful for hero sections embedded inside an article that already has its own <h1>.

asChild — paint onto a router Link

For a styled <Link> with no extra wrapper element:

import { Link } from 'react-router-dom';

<Typography variant="h3" color="primary" asChild>
  <Link to="/dashboard">Open dashboard →</Link>
</Typography>

Radix Slot merges our className + ref onto the child. The rendered DOM is exactly <a> — no extra <h3> wrapping it. When both as and asChild are passed, asChild wins.

Composition inside <Box variant="solid">

<Box variant="solid" color="primary" rounded="2xl" p={12}>
  <Typography variant="h1" color="inherit" gutterBottom>
    Get started today
  </Typography>
  <Typography variant="body1" color="inherit">
    Two minutes from install to your first component on screen.
  </Typography>
</Box>

color="inherit" is the magic: Box paints the surface, Typography reads the resulting color from its parent. No prop drilling, no CSS variables to remember.

Theme defaults

Configure <Typography> defaults application-wide through the theme.

import { patchTheme } from '@dashforge/tw-theme';

patchTheme({
  components: {
    Typography: {
      defaults: { variant: 'body1', color: 'neutral', weight: 'normal' },
    },
  },
});

Configurable axes (TypographyVariantProps):

Non-visual axes (as, asChild, children, event handlers, ARIA) are not theme-configurable — per-instance semantics.

Precedence chain (lowest → highest):

1. defaultVariants from the internal typographyVariants recipe (variant: 'body1', color: 'neutral').
2. theme.components.Typography.defaults (application-wide).
3. Instance prop (<Typography variant="h1" weight="bold" />) — wins over theme.
4. sx — appended to the root and wins over conflicting classes via tailwind-merge.

TypeScript: theme.components.Typography.defaults autocompletes to the seven axes above.

Reactivity: useComponentDefaults('Typography') subscribes to the theme store — patchTheme re-renders every mounted instance inheriting the changed axis.

API

Props

Default HTML tag per variant

Slots & slotProps

<Typography> has no slots. It renders a single DOM element (tag inferred from variant, overridable via as or asChild) — there is no anatomy to target separately.

The slotProps API pattern only exists on compound components with multiple visually distinct regions. Examples: <Menu>, <DataGrid>, <Autocomplete>, <Card>.

For <Typography>, use sx for any style override, or wrap in Box when you need a richer style surface.

Variant catalogue

import { typographyVariants } from '@dashforge/tw';
// typographyVariants({ variant: 'h2', color: 'primary' }) → className string

Useful when extending the catalogue downstream (e.g. an app-level "display" variant that wraps Typography).

Notes

• asChild vs as precedence: when both are passed, asChild wins. We considered making this a compile-time discriminated union, but the props type already has 8 axes — one more dimension would inflate IntelliSense suggestions for marginal benefit. Documented + tested.
• color="inherit" is the right default for nested usage. Typography painted inside <Box variant="solid" color="primary"> reads white because the Box sets the inherited color on its container.
• weight always wins over variant default — <Typography variant="h1" weight="normal"> produces a thin display heading. tailwind-merge resolves the conflicting font-* classes to the last one.
• No lineHeight prop in v1 — the per-variant leading is opinionated (leading-[1.05] for h1 down to leading-relaxed for body). Override via sx="leading-loose" when needed. We'll consider promoting this to a prop if it becomes the most-overridden axis.

When NOT to use

• Inside another <Typography>: nesting <p> inside <p> is invalid HTML. Wrap the inner text in <Typography as="span"> if you really need that.
• For inline icons + text: use a Stack with direction="row" and put icon + Typography side by side. Embedding an SVG inside Typography breaks truncate and confuses screen readers.