The Workspace

When you open an icon pack, you’re in the workspace. This is where the actual curation happens.

Layout

The workspace is split into two areas:

• The scratchpad takes up the center of the screen — a browsable grid of every icon candidate you’ve generated or uploaded.
• The pack panel sits on the right — your curated set of named icons that will eventually be published.

The scratchpad

The scratchpad is your working canvas. Every icon you generate or upload lands here. Nothing in the scratchpad ships to developers — it’s purely your space to explore and compare.

You can:

• Browse the full grid of candidates
• Favorite icons you want to come back to
• Compare icons side by side
• Filter by style, category, or status
• Delete candidates you don’t need anymore

The scratchpad can hold as many icons as you want. Only icons you explicitly add to the pack will ever be published.

The pack panel

The pack panel is where you build your actual icon pack. Each entry is a slot — a named icon that will become a component in the installed output.

When you add an icon from the scratchpad to the pack, Icon Forge:

1. Creates a slot with an auto-generated name based on the icon’s description
2. Assigns the selected icon to that slot

The slot name is what developers will import. check-circle becomes <CheckCircle /> in the installed component. Treat slot names like you’d treat API names — clear, stable, and intentional.

Working with slots

• Add icons from the scratchpad to create new slots
• Swap a slot’s icon by assigning a different candidate
• Rename a slot to give it a better public name
• Remove a slot from the pack (the source icon stays in the scratchpad)
• Reorder slots to organize the pack logically

Auto-naming

When you add an icon to the pack, Icon Forge derives the slot name from the icon’s label or prompt. Short, clear names pass through as-is. Longer descriptions get compressed into a shorter icon-style name.

The auto-generated name is a starting point — rename it if you want something more specific.

Name your slots before publishing

Once developers start importing components by name, renaming a slot is a breaking change. Pick clear names before you hit publish.

From scratchpad to published pack

The flow:

1. Generate a batch of candidates into the scratchpad
2. Browse and compare — find the ones that work together
3. Add the best ones to the pack panel, creating named slots
4. Keep iterating — generate more, swap in better candidates, refine names
5. Publish when the set feels complete

Only assigned slots are included in a release. Unassigned slots, leftover scratchpad candidates, and anything you’ve rejected stays in the workspace and never ships.

Things to watch for while curating

A good icon pack isn’t just individually nice icons — it’s a set that works together. As you curate, look for:

• Consistent line weight and style across the whole set
• Clear silhouettes at small sizes (16px, 20px, 24px)
• Predictable naming — if you have arrow-left, developers will expect arrow-right and arrow-up too
• Coverage — think about the full set your product needs, not just the first few icons that come to mind

Safe vs. breaking changes

Safe — you can do these freely without affecting anyone:

• Swapping a better candidate into an existing slot (same name, better icon)
• Generating more candidates in the scratchpad
• Leaving scratchpad icons unassigned

Breaking — these change what developers have already integrated:

• Renaming a slot after developers are importing it (component name changes)
• Renaming the org, project, or pack (install identifier changes)

Treat slot names and namespace as public API once a pack is in use.