Boneyard: Generate pixel-perfect skeleton screens from your real DOM

[−] junon 38d ago

No examples, no mention of why someone would want this, site is broken on mobile.

[−] gavmor 38d ago

Hm... A Twitter comment is not documentation, but:

> every skeleton screen you've ever hand-coded is a waste of time

> you're literally measuring padding and guessing widths to build a worse version of a layout that already exists in your DOM

> so I made a package that just reads the real one

Linked from the readme.

[−] junon 37d ago

I've never personally seen a skeleton screen. I don't know why anyone would need this, and struggling to think of what problems are solved by them.

[−] G_o_D 37d ago

You may have seen.

https://i.postimg.cc/qqCYtL6V/Screenshot-2026-04-08-134800.j...

The pic above is representation of skeleton screen on youtube.com when opened in browser

Placeholder with same dimension or colors as actual content, which will get replaced it keep user engaged rather having a blank screen that suddenly fills or spinners.

[−] junon 37d ago

Ahhh okay, have never seen it called that before. Thanks!

[−] stuaxo 37d ago

Thanks, I had not heard this term before.

Been working on websites on and off since 1999

[−] dvh 38d ago

But it has animated logo (that you have to click on to start) and chart of GitHub stars progression in time!

[−] mock-possum 38d ago

Am I understanding this right - in order to make ‘accurate’ placeholder content, it preloads the actual content, then uses that to guide the appearance of the placeholder content, that it shows while you’re waiting for your actual content to load…

Was this an April fools joke?

[−] Doxin 36d ago

You're close. it loads the actual content while you're developing your app to create skeletons. In production it then uses the data gathered in development.

It's a clever trick.

[−] smokedetector1 38d ago

This is cool but I'm confused - it says it generates the bones at "build time" not at "runtime." But you're calling this headless bone generator while your app is running, right? That sounds like runtime.

[−] m000 38d ago

I have no idea what this means, and I don't think I'm alone. Make a video dammit.

[−] rzkyif 38d ago

Seems interesting, but I wonder how this would be better than just asking an LLM to implement the skeletons?

For most components, current generation models should be able to understand the component code and produce skeletons that occupies exactly the same space

[−] CharlesW 38d ago

I do this often, and they do! Yours is the same question I had.

[−] simongr3dal 38d ago

Their doc linked at the bottom actually has a pretty nice example.

https://boneyard.vercel.app/how-it-works

[−] steveharing1 37d ago

Appreciate this! For anyone looking for examples of skeletons it generates, you can visit their doc

[−] bedroom_jabroni 38d ago

I don't like skeletons that much but it's really creative to have the headless browser inspect your running dev env and capture element size & placement snapshots.

[−] nozzlegear 38d ago

I love seeing things that support Svelte.

[−] evantbyrne 38d ago

I was going to say it seems potentially useful, but engagement stats for this on Github and X seem unnatural and the anon crypto author makes it a hard no for me

Boneyard: Generate pixel-perfect skeleton screens from your real DOM (github.com)

18 comments