Marketplace
Harbr
The public name for Anvil, and the design lab where its brand and interface were worked out.
Harbr is the name Anvil goes by in public: the same product, with a new name, voice and interface.
The Harbr lab is a front-end-only workspace of twenty interface experiments, each kept with a written verdict: what worked, what read as generic, and why.
- Status
- The public site is live at anvil.engineer. The design lab itself is private.
- Stack
- Next.js, React, Tailwind, Motion
Why it exists
With the logo cropped, the earlier interface could have been any rental or services product. Harbr gives the marketplace a look and voice of its own.
The lab exists so ideas can be built, felt and thrown away fast, before any of them costs the product real engineering time.
Try it
Some of the lab's directions and the verdict each one got. This is a concept built for this site with fictional data, not the product itself.
Lab verdicts · Concept · fictional data
One run through it
Name the problem
Earlier pages never showed a single pro.
Make a bet
The hypothesis for this round: the page should feel like a community notice board.
Build it alone
One self-contained HTML file that touches no route in the app.
Judge it in writing
It read as local. Stock faces, tight contrast and the risk of implying activity that wasn't real counted against it.
Make the call
Rejected, because it read as a consumer app.
Keep the lesson
The build is archived instead of deleted, and its best idea, that supply belongs on the page, carries forward. Winning directions get rebuilt in Anvil with tests.
What it does
Experiments with verdicts
Every direction is built, screenshotted, and judged in writing before anything reaches the product.
A motion language
A ladder of durations where exits run faster than entrances, and nothing scales up from zero.
A reference library
Annotated captures of other products, each with what to take and what to avoid.
Two temperatures, one token set
Light and dark surfaces by re-declaring semantic tokens, never by forking components.
Why it's built this way
No backend, on purpose
Mock data means an experiment only has to be convincing. Nothing has to be correct yet, which keeps each round fast.
Nothing shared between experiments
Shared code makes experiments look alike, and then they can't be compared.
Old work is fenced off from agents
Every direction stays in the archive, but coding agents can't read the prior interface. When they do, new work drifts back toward the old.
Show what is true
The design rules ban countdowns, fake scarcity and invented activity.
How it fits together
- 01Next.js and Tailwind with mock data and a client-side bid simulation; no backend on purpose.
- 02Deterministic animation: scripted timelines, no randomness during render.
In plain terms
- Register
- A design's overall visual tone.
- Supply on the page
- Showing actual pros and their work.
- Ruler
- The chosen bid that the others are restated against.
- Receipt
- A review shown with its job and price.