I once asked 2014 me a silly question how beautif

I once asked 2014 me a silly question: how beautiful can an article feel with one stylesheet in ~786 bytes? I shipped essential.css to find out. Constraints over features. Fast by default. The idea of worked better than I expected. Architecture in miniature: • Style the HTML you already have: h1 to h6, p, a, img, blockquote • One column with a ~65ch measure and comfy line height • Images scale to the container • Simple header and footer • Element selectors only so overrides stay easy Tradeoffs: no theming, no RTL, no print, and a11y leaned on the author. I stood on Normalize.css and friends. What held up: defaults as a service, readability over chrome, constraints focus the mind. What broke: third party CDN, global element styling in growing apps, no tokens for consistency. How I would do it in 2025 while keeping the spirit: • 1 to 2 KB base with CSS custom properties • :where() to keep specificity low and @\layer base to compose safely • clamp() for fluid type and sane measure • prefers color scheme with strong contrast • Minimal reset, logical properties, and container query friendly patterns • Versioned file you host Lessons and questions: • Small defaults beat big frameworks for simple content • Own your assets end to end • Write for the reader first What belongs in a small base today? Where is the line between reset and system? Would you still ship a global element layer or is everything a component now? Here’s the project: https://github.com/AnandChowdhary/essential.css