Signal North: A Practical HTMX Field Guide

The project demonstrates how much can be achieved without writing custom application JavaScript. Instead of maintaining client-side state or building a separate frontend API, the browser sends normal HTTP requests and the server responds with HTML fragments. HTMX connects those requests to elements on the page using attributes such as hx-get, hx-post, hx-put, hx-delete, hx-target, and hx-swap. The page includes working examples of:

• Debounced command search
• Server-rendered telemetry refreshes
• Form submissions with validation
• Out-of-band updates using hx-swap-oob
• Activity creation and deletion
• Inline editing with hx-put
• Polling with every 5s
• Lazy loading with revealed
• Browser history updates with hx-push-url
• Response events using HX-Trigger
• Request coordination with hx-sync
• Request shaping with hx-select, hx-include, and hx-vals
• Swap timing and transition modifiers
• Server-sent events through the HTMX SSE extension Each demo is connected to a real HTTP endpoint. The server returns meaningful HTML rather than JSON, and every card explains three parts of the interaction:

1. What HTMX does
2. What the Go server does
3. What responsibility remains with the browser The project also makes an important distinction: it uses HTMX and the SSE extension, both of which are JavaScript libraries, but it contains zero custom application JavaScript. There are no frontend components, client-side state stores, inline event handlers, or custom JavaScript files. Signal North is built with Go, html/template, and a small net/http server. HTMX is vendored locally so the site continues to work without CDN access. The application is tested with Go unit tests, race detection, go vet, and Playwright browser tests. The project is deployed in two ways. A container version runs directly in Wincontainer, while a separate Vercel Hobby deployment uses Vercel’s Go runtime and native Git integration. The page also explains when HTMX is not the right tool. HTMX is a strong choice when the server owns the application state and HTML is the natural response. It may not be the best choice for games, canvas applications, rich editors, offline-first workflows, or extremely high-frequency interactions that need to respond without a network round trip. The central idea behind Signal North is simple: Use HTMX when the server owns the state, return HTML from the server, and keep the browser responsible for presentation rather than duplicating application logic. Signal North is not intended to be a production infrastructure platform. It is an educational field guide for understanding how server-driven interfaces can remain interactive, responsive, and visually polished without becoming a large client-side application.

see the page here https://signal-north-htmx.vercel.app/