Quality Mark

The Estuary Standard

Every Estuary product must meet four non-negotiable criteria — regardless of stack, vertical, or price point. This is what the Standard requires.


01 of 04

Performance

A product that loads slowly is a broken product. The Estuary Standard requires 90+ Lighthouse across all four categories — not as a target, as a floor.

We achieve this the same way every time: no jQuery, no page builder runtime, server-rendered output, self-hosted fonts, and less than 3KB of JavaScript on the wire.

  • 90+ Lighthouse Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, SEO
  • No jQuery dependency
  • No page builder runtime loaded
  • Self-hosted fonts — zero external font requests at page load
  • Server-rendered HTML — critical content visible without JS
  • FCP under 1.5s on mobile (3G simulated), LCP under 2.5s
  • CLS 0 — no layout shift
Keel — Lighthouse Scores (Mobile)
Performance100
Accessibility100
Best Practices100
FCP0.9s
LCP1.1s
TBT40ms
CLS0
Total JavaScript2KB gzipped
External font requests0

02 of 04

Design System

Every Estuary product ships with a complete design system — not a theme with some color options. Named design worlds. A full CSS token architecture. Density, motion, radius, and surface controls that stay coherent when changed.

One setting changes everything — and it stays coherent. This is what makes Estuary products feel like $10k websites at a $79 price point.

  • Named design worlds — not just light and dark
  • Complete CSS custom property token architecture
  • Color, density, motion, radius, and surface tokens
  • No hardcoded values — all via CSS custom properties
  • Minimum 4 design worlds per product
  • WCAG AA contrast verified across all worlds
  • TypeScript token files for programmatic access
Keel — Design Worlds
Manuscript
Nightgarden
Rosewood
Nordic
Canopy
Clay
CSS Token Example
--color-accent: hsl(15,68%,37%); --radius-base: 8px; --motion-speed: 0.25s; --density: 1rem; --surface-tone: 0.06;

03 of 04

AEO-Ready

Answer Engine Optimization is how content gets surfaced by AI search tools — Perplexity, ChatGPT Search, Gemini. Standard SEO is necessary but no longer sufficient.

Every Estuary product ships with structured data built in at the block level. No plugin required. No configuration needed. The schema is part of the product.

  • Schema.org JSON-LD auto-output from every relevant block
  • FAQPage schema from every FAQ/Questions block — no config
  • Vertical-specific entity markup — Organization, Product, LocalBusiness
  • Semantic heading hierarchy enforced by the block system
  • No JS-rendered critical content — AI crawlers read the real page
  • llms.txt support for AI agent crawl control
  • Clean meta, OG, and Twitter card implementation
Agency / Studio (Keel)
Organization Service FAQPage HowTo Person CreativeWork
Ecommerce (Draft)
Product Offer Review BreadcrumbList
Real Estate (Harbor)
RealEstateListing LocalBusiness OpeningHoursSpec
Hospitality (Mooring)
FoodEstablishment Menu Event Reservation

No plugin required. No Yoast needed. Schema auto-outputs from the blocks themselves.


04 of 04

Developer First

Estuary products are built by an engineer, for engineers. The buyer is a developer who will customize this, inherit it, and hand it to a client. That experience is a product decision.

Every Estuary product ships production-ready, extensible, and documented.

  • Child theme scaffold included — override without touching core
  • TypeScript token files — design system in code, not just CSS
  • Action and filter hook points for clean extension
  • One-click demo import — functional starting point, not a blank canvas
  • Full documentation shipped with the product — not a wiki
  • GPL licensed — no license servers, no phoning home
  • Vite build system — fast local development
What ships with every product
Child theme scaffold
TypeScript tokens
Demo import (.json)
Docs (HTML, self-hosted)
GPL license
License servernone
Phone-home trackingnone
Third-party API requirednone

See the Standard in practice.

Keel is the first Estuary product — live and available now. Browse the demo and inspect the source.