chirp-ui starts from a deliberately old-fashioned premise: most of an interface is just HTML, and HTML is something Python already renders well. The component library is a set of Kida macros that emit plain markup, styled with modern CSS. There is no bundler, no hydration pass, and no client framework to boot before the first paint.
Render first, enhance second
A page made ofcard, form, and navmacros is fully usable the moment the
server flushes the response. We add behavior in two narrow places:
- htmx for swaps, server-sent events, and fragment navigation.
- Alpine for small islands of local state — a disclosure, a toggle, a menu.
Neither is required for the page to work. Disable JavaScript and the forms still submit, the links still navigate, the content still reads.
What you get for free
Because the output is real HTML, the platform features come along without extra
work: view-source is legible, the back button behaves, print stylesheets apply,
and assistive technology sees semantic structure instead of a<div>soup
assembled at runtime.
The trade is honest. You write a little more on the server and a lot less on the client, and the screens you ship stay close to the screens you can reason about.