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changelog

Web

GalAtlas: A Cinematic Atlas of the Cosmos

Launched GalAtlas, a cinematic 3D web atlas of exoplanets and the cosmos. You fly from a single rocky world out through its planetary system to the Milky Way and the cosmic web beyond, with real catalog data, discovery timelines, and habitability readouts layered over a full-bleed WebGL stage.

Followed the launch with a presentation-layer redesign that lets the 3D be the hero. The stage now runs edge to edge while filters, the discovery timeline, and the detail panels recede into invoked drawers, a bottom-sheet timeline peek, and progressively disclosed sections, so the chrome only appears when you reach for it. Built with Vite, React, TypeScript, and react-three-fiber, and deployed on Cloudflare.

Library

El Form: Themeable, Tailwind-Free AutoForm

Gave El Form's AutoForm a real theming system. The shipped styles are now hand-authored, CSS-variable–tokenized, and wrapped in a cascade layer — Tailwind-free, so the components style themselves in any project with no Tailwind required. Added a theme prop (default / minimal / dark), a classNames slots API for bring-your-own styling that always wins the cascade, and live, interactive theme previews in the docs.

Web

Polis Atlas: An Interactive Atlas of Political Power

Launched Polis Atlas, an interactive atlas of political power. A spectrum maps 50 ideologies from total state to no state, and a 3D globe classifies every country by its system of government with 18 real-world statistics layered on top. Built with React, TypeScript, Three.js, and Vite.

Library

El Form: An Interactive Playground in the Docs

Added a live Playground and inline, editable code sandboxes throughout the El Form docs, so you can run AutoForm and useForm examples directly in the browser instead of copy-pasting. Part of a broader push to make the library easy for both humans and AI agents to pick up — alongside machine-readable docs (llms.txt) and an MCP server that gives coding assistants accurate El Form knowledge.

Library

El Form: React Hook Form Parity + a TypeScript Speed Win

Pushed El Form closer to a drop-in React Hook Form alternative: a useWatch hook for reactive value subscriptions, a useFieldArray hook for dynamic arrays with stable keys, and the missing formState fields (isSubmitted, isSubmitSuccessful, submitCount, plus isValidating and a reactive dirtyFields), along with mode: "onTouched" and an opt-in reValidateMode.

At the same time I reworked the Path<T> types so they instantiate roughly 7.8× less at depth — El Form now type-checks faster than React Hook Form on realistic nested schemas, while keeping its selector-based, minimal-re-render core.

Web

Atlas: Explore My Work as a Galaxy Map

Added /atlas, a galaxy-map way to explore my work. Projects cluster into hubs you can fly through on an interactive 3D star map — complete with a left project rail and per-project models — as an exploratory alternative to the standard list view. Built with three.js and react-three-fiber.

The same stretch brought a broader site refresh: per-project detail pages with JSON-LD structured data and an llms.txt for better search and LLM discovery, a fully keyboard-accessible atlas that respects reduced-motion preferences, and project media converted from GIFs to hover-to-play MP4 for faster loads.

Obsidian

Brain Atlas: Obsidian Plugin

Released Brain Atlas, an Obsidian community plugin that turns a vault into an animated 3D anatomical brain. Notes become clustered regions, wikilinks become neural pathways, and the graph stays fully native inside Obsidian.

Updated Brain Atlas to v0.1.5 after early community feedback from folder-heavy and frontmatter-heavy vaults. The plugin now has frontmatter value mappings for existing taxonomies like type:wiki=source, direct region mappings like type:person=temporal, folder region mappings for vaults organized by directories, and a Classification report that explains why notes landed in each brain region.

The release also adds label-density guardrails to prevent dense note labels from turning into visual noise, a DAYLIGHT palette, optional lower-idle-CPU performance presets, and seeded local test vaults for checking how the atlas behaves across different vault organization styles.

macOS

Cerebro: macOS Agent Workspace

Building Cerebro, a native macOS multi-agent workspace for coordinating provider-backed coding agents. The current interface centers agent operations, workflows, audit context, and a galaxy-style command surface in a single desktop app.

Obsidian

Cerebro Mycelium: Obsidian Plugin

Released Cerebro Mycelium, an Obsidian community plugin that renders a vault as a living fungal network. Notes become soft kind-clusters, wikilinks become curved hyphae, and recently edited notes glow as fruiting bodies.

macOS

Throttle v1.0.0

Released Throttle, a macOS menu bar app and WidgetKit widget for tracking Claude Max and Codex Pro usage limits. It keeps session, five-hour, and weekly quota windows visible without opening either service in a browser.

Knicks Knacks

Sector Zero: New Playable Modes

Added three new playable modes to the Sector Zero game including survival mode and cooperative multiplayer. The procedural generation system for planet surfaces is still being refined.

Agile Anarchy: What's Left

A postmortem on process worship and what actually ships software. Published on Medium. Explores the gap between agile theory and the reality of small teams moving fast.

Knicks Knacks

Multiplayer Support

Building co-op mode for up to 4 players per session. Planning WebSocket-based sync with client-side prediction.

El Form v1.0

Dynamic form builder with drag-and-drop, conditional logic, and real-time validation. Built with React, TypeScript, and Zustand.

© Nichalas Barnes 2026
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