Core Principles
Pillar #1: Honor Web Development Fundamentals
Etch respects the fundamental language and practices of web development. We don't create proprietary systems or "magic" that hides what's really happening.
Instead, we work with HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript as they were designed to work, providing a visual interface that directly manipulates real code. This means you learn actual web development skills, not just how to use a tool.
Pillar #2: Never Generate an Element the User Can't Access
Every element Etch creates is fully accessible and editable. There are no "black box" elements, hidden wrappers, or mysterious containers that you can't see, select, or modify. If Etch generates it, you can access it. This transparency ensures you have complete control over your code and understand exactly what's happening in your project.
Pillar #3: Don't Rescue Users From Themselves
We believe in empowering users rather than protecting them from making mistakes. Etch doesn't prevent you from doing things that might be "wrong" or "inefficient" because learning often comes from experimentation and understanding consequences.
Instead of adding bogus code to try and save you from mistakes you might make, we provide the tools, education, and validation to help you recognize and avoid them.
Pillar #4: Do What's Right, Not What's Easy
This philosophy guides how we design features, architect our software, and make product decisions. Instead of implementing surface-level features or shortcuts, we dig deep to ensure every feature is robust, flexible, and truly empowers users.
We invest the extra effort to support advanced workflows, maintain high standards for accessibility and best practices, and build tools that scale with your needs.
Our priority is long-term quality, maintainability, and user freedom, even if that means taking the more challenging and expensive path during development.
Pillar #5: Do What's Effective, Not What's Popular
Etch doesn't chase trends or implement features just because other tools have them. We focus on what actually works and what genuinely improves the development experience. This means making decisions based on effectiveness and user needs, not on what's currently fashionable in the industry.
Pillar #6: Default Styles Must Have 0,0,0 Specificity
All default styles in Etch are applied with 0,0,0 specificity, making them extremely easy to override without a specificity war.
Pillar #7: Make Things Easier, But Don't Compromise
A visual development environment has advantages over a coding environment. Dragging and dropping elements, re-arranging a structure panel, dropping in a carousel, wrapping an element in conditional logic, creating components, looping elements –– all these things are objectively faster and easier to do in a visual development environment.
The problem with traditional page builders is that, in making these things easier, they introduced uncomfortable compromises. Poor code, functionality limitations, less scalability and maintainability, etc.
Etch will never do that. Our responsibility to our customers is simple – make your life easier, with no tradeoffs or gotchas.