Incremental CSSOM

Browsers treat CSS as a global, order-dependent resource. Because any rule can override another, the browser must wait for an entire stylesheet to be downloaded and parsed before it can safely resolve styles and perform layout.

By generating rules strictly just-in-time (before the browser resolves styles for a newly inserted element), Maple creates a critical architectural guarantee: a newly inserted rule cannot match any element that was already rendered.

This guarantee, combined with the uniform specificity 0-1-0 of atomic utilities, has direct consequences for the browser engine:

• No invalidation: Previously rendered elements do not need to be reconsidered.
• No global matching: The engine does not need to evaluate the new rule against the entire DOM.
• Simplified specificity: Complex precedence and tie-breaker resolution is avoided.
• No unused styles: The CSSOM grows linearly and never contains unused rules.

This shifts CSS from a front-loaded, render-blocking asset into an incremental, demand-driven process. The performance cost now scales linearly, and only with the unique utility classes that actually appear on the screen.