Style your nodes

This guide shows you how to make a node look exactly the way you want — picking its shape, icon, colour, weight, secondary text, link target, and, when you must, a hardened one-off palette.

Every recipe below is a small static illustration (animate: false). For the full node field table see the YAML schema; for site-wide colour see Match your theme and colours.

Pick a kind

kind is the fastest lever: it sets a node's default icon, accent, and variant in one word. If you want a database to read as a database, give it kind: db and stop there.

type: architecture
meta: { direction: LR }
nodes:
  - { id: user, title: Customer, kind: user }
  - { id: gw, title: Gateway, kind: gateway }
  - { id: svc, title: Orders, kind: service }
  - { id: q, title: Events, kind: queue }
  - { id: db, title: Postgres, kind: db }
edges:
  - { from: user, to: gw }
  - { from: gw, to: svc }
  - { from: svc, to: q }
  - { from: svc, to: db }
  

kind defaults to service, so a node with no kind is a primary-accented service card.

Change the icon

To swap the glyph, set icon to a named key. The names cover the usual infrastructure vocabulary (cdn, lock, kafka, lambda, brain, and many more) — see the full list in the YAML schema. An unknown key falls back to the kind's default icon, so a typo never breaks the render.

type: architecture
meta: { direction: LR }
nodes:
  - { id: edge, title: Edge, kind: gateway, icon: cdn }
  - { id: app, title: App }
  - { id: vault, title: Secrets, icon: vault }
edges:
  - { from: edge, to: app }
  - { from: app, to: vault }
  

For a glyph that isn't in the set, pass raw inline SVG. Beck drops the markup straight into the icon chip, so size your paths to a 24×24 viewBox:

type: architecture
nodes:
  - id: custom
    title: Custom mark
    icon: '<svg viewBox="0 0 24 24"><path d="M12 2 2 22h20z" fill="currentColor"/></svg>'
  

Set an accent

accent colours the icon chip, border tint, and status pill. Prefer a token — primary, success, warn, danger, info, or neutral — because tokens ride the theme and recolour cleanly in light and dark mode.

type: architecture
meta: { direction: LR }
nodes:
  - { id: ok, title: Healthy, accent: success }
  - { id: warn, title: Degraded, accent: warn }
  - { id: down, title: Offline, accent: danger }
edges:
  - { from: ok, to: warn }
  - { from: warn, to: down }
  

Any value that isn't a token — a hex, rgb(), or CSS colour name — is used verbatim. A raw accent does not follow the theme, so reserve it for a deliberately fixed brand colour:

type: architecture
nodes:
  - { id: brand, title: Brand service, accent: '#7c3aed' }
  

Change visual weight

variant controls how loud a node is, independent of its kind:

• solid — the default, fully filled card.
• subtle — dimmed, for supporting or background components.
• ghost — dashed, transparent, for a planned-but-absent placeholder.

type: architecture
meta: { direction: LR }
nodes:
  - { id: live, title: Live, variant: solid }
  - { id: minor, title: Supporting, variant: subtle }
  - { id: planned, title: Planned, variant: ghost }
edges:
  - { from: live, to: minor }
  - { from: minor, to: planned }
  

Add a subtitle or status

subtitle adds a muted second line — good for a hostname, region, or technology note. status renders a small pill on the card.

type: architecture
meta: { direction: LR }
nodes:
  - { id: api, title: API, subtitle: us-east-1 }
  - { id: cache, title: Redis, kind: cache, status: warm }
edges:
  - { from: api, to: cache }
  

A status set here is the node's resting state. If you want a status that changes while the diagram plays — flipping from idle to busy, say — that's a flow concern; see Animate the flow.

Add items or a body

items renders a bulleted list inside the card; body renders a wrapped paragraph under it. Both grow the card to fit their content — useful for an endpoint list, a changelog note, or any card that needs more than a title and a subtitle. Mind map topics use the same two fields for the same purpose.

type: architecture
meta: { direction: LR }
nodes:
  - { id: orders, title: Orders Service, items: ["POST /orders", "GET /orders/:id"] }
  - { id: notes, title: Release Notes, body: "Ships weekly on Thursdays; see the changelog for details." }
edges:
  - { from: orders, to: notes }

Make a node a link

To turn a card into a hyperlink, add href. Beck renders the whole node as an <a>. Add target: _blank to open in a new tab.

type: architecture
nodes:
  - { id: docs, title: API docs, icon: api, href: https://example.com/api, target: _blank }
  

target is only meaningful alongside href.

Override one node's colours

When a single card must match a fixed brand or a hardened reference design, override its surface and text directly. surface sets the card background and textColor sets the text — both take raw CSS colours and both ignore the theme, so use them only where you genuinely need a fixed look.

type: architecture
nodes:
  - { id: plain, title: Themed card }
  - id: branded
    title: Branded card
    surface: '#0f172a'
    textColor: '#e2e8f0'
    accent: '#38bdf8'
  

For the complete node field table, see the YAML schema. To recolour every node at once by adopting your site's palette, see Match your theme and colours.