Motivation

SVDM was created to handle styling variance in complex design systems where a single component often depends on many overlapping axes of variation. Traditional approaches make it hard to see how these axes interact, and it is easy to duplicate configuration or lose type safety.

SVDM provides a structured way to describe these axes and their combinations so that the system stays understandable even as your design language grows.

Relationship to CVA

SVDM is inspired by Class Variance Authority and aims to cover everything CVA does while extending into more complex variance spaces. The goal is to preserve the ergonomics of a small, schema-based API while making it easier to represent multi-dimensional style combinations and reuse those schemas across components.

The name echoes singular value decomposition, which simplifies complex matrix structures. Similarly, SVDM focuses on decomposing styling variance into dimensions that are easier to reason about and reuse.