It started with an SSO project.
I was building an IDP server — the kind that handles authentication across connected domains. I wanted a Google-like widget, the one that shows up and says "Hey, you switched accounts" or "Welcome back, Pratham." Clean. Branded. Satisfying.
So I built a toast that shipped via a script tag directly from my IDP server. It worked. But it was rigid, tightly coupled to my server, and offered almost zero flexibility for anything outside that one use case.
That bothered me.
So I asked myself — what if the toast could live anywhere, independent of my server? What if any project could use it?
That's when I found out you can just... make your own npm package. I set a target of one night. And in that one night, robot-toast@1.0.0-beta.0 was born.
I have no idea why I made them robots. It just felt right.
I built a playground to see how it looked from the outside. Posted it on Reddit, LinkedIn, sent it to some friends. People had opinions. Good ones, bad ones, weird ones. I shipped fixes on weekends, mostly when I felt like it. No roadmap. No deadlines.
Two months later, v2.1.9. Sixteen variants. Four themes. Zero dependencies. A React hook. SSR safe.
And somewhere along the way — 3,200 downloads. More traction than the SSO project that started the whole thing.
Here's the thing I want to be honest about: I didn't build this for you.
I built it because I needed it.
I open-sourced it because why not.
I maintained it because the feedback was interesting, not because I felt obligated. There's no company behind it, no roadmap, no monetization plan.
If you use it and love it — genuinely happy about that.
If you use it and curse at it — valid, open a GitHub issue.
If you never use it — also completely fine.
That detachment, weirdly, made it better. Every update came from real curiosity, not pressure.
If you want robots in your notifications - robot-toast demo , use npm i robot-toast
If not, I hope your toast library of choice brings you peace.
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