Marcus Klein
July 25, 2026 · 9 min read
Sections are the unit of everything
In OS 2.0, every page is sections and every section is a schema — settings, blocks, and presets your marketing team controls. The quality of a theme is the quality of its section architecture.
Senior theme work is mostly schema design: anticipating how the business will actually use the editor.
Block-first design thinking
Design sections as stacks of blocks — headline, media, CTA, testimonial — so any combination is possible without new code. One flexible section beats five rigid ones.
Test schemas against real editorial tasks: 'restyle the homepage for the holiday drop.' If it needs a developer, the schema failed.
Performance discipline inside themes
Lazy-load below-fold media, serve images at display size, keep CSS per-section scoped, and never let a section request data it does not render.
A theme's speed is the sum of its sections' discipline. One heavy section is one slow page.
Customization without chaos
Governance matters at scale: naming conventions, preset libraries, and a document describing what each section is for. Un-governed themes become un-editable within a year.
The handoff document is part of the deliverable. A theme your team cannot operate is a theme that quietly re-hires you.
Knowing the customization ceiling
Themes cannot own checkout logic (Functions do), cannot run background jobs, and cannot own deeply dynamic experiences at scale (Hydrogen does). The senior move is recognizing which layer the work belongs to.
Force-fitting theme work that belongs to Functions or headless creates fragile stores. Route the work correctly the first time.
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