Blueprint

A classic-style example: lower Manhattan as a drafting sheet, made in the Mapzen spirit. It is not a port of a Tangram original. The ground is a drafting grid. Water is dark with a pale shoreline, streets are thin and pale, park outlines are dashed, and the buildings are flat-shaded blue extrusions.

The static tier

Like Crosshatch, this page is the static tier. It is one plain style-spec document, so it is its own export: mlym emit --strict compiles it with zero warnings, and the emitted style.json renders the same map in vanilla MapLibre. The only baked asset is the grid, which mlym bake blueprint --out <dir> regenerates.

What the effect adds

The experimental blueprint effect draws a metre-scaled grid on every building face, so the lines never stretch with building height, and gives the edges a glow. It upgrades the buildings layer in place. Where the effect isn’t loaded, and in every exported style, the flat-shaded buildings shown here are the fallback. The Mapzen classics page shows both side by side.

The complete document

# yaml-language-server: $schema=https://docs.maplibre-yaml.org/schema/latest/map.schema.json
# Classic-style example: blueprint — a drafting sheet in the Mapzen spirit,
# not a port of a Tangram original.
#
# The static tier: every layer is plain style spec, so this document is its
# own export — `mlym emit --strict` compiles it with nothing lost. A
# drafting-grid ground (baked by `mlym bake blueprint`), dark water with a
# pale shoreline, thin pale streets, dashed park outlines, and flat-shaded
# blue buildings. A metre-scaled grid on every building face is the runtime
# effect's job, not this document's.
type: map
id: blueprint
config:
  center: [-74.0118, 40.7075]
  zoom: 15.9
  pitch: 60
  bearing: 29
  # Inline base style: OpenFreeMap's glyphs for the labels; the document
  # owns every layer.
  mapStyle:
    version: 8
    glyphs: "https://tiles.openfreemap.org/fonts/{fontstack}/{range}.pbf"
    sources: {}
    layers: []
images:
  grid: { url: "https://docs.maplibre-yaml.org/classics/blueprint/grid.png", pixelRatio: 2 }
sources:
  omt:
    type: vector
    url: "https://tiles.openfreemap.org/planet"
    attribution: '<a href="https://openfreemap.org">OpenFreeMap</a> © <a href="https://www.openmaptiles.org/">OpenMapTiles</a> Data from <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright">OpenStreetMap</a>'
layers:
  - id: ground
    type: background
    paint:
      background-pattern: grid
  - id: water
    type: fill
    source: omt
    source-layer: water
    paint:
      fill-color: "#072a63"
  - id: shoreline
    type: line
    source: omt
    source-layer: water
    paint:
      line-color: "#9fd3ff"
      line-width: 1.2
      line-opacity: 0.8
  - id: parks
    type: line
    source: omt
    source-layer: park
    paint:
      line-color: "#9fd3ff"
      line-width: 1
      line-dasharray: [3, 2]
      line-opacity: 0.7
  - id: roads
    type: line
    source: omt
    source-layer: transportation
    filter: ["match", ["get", "class"], ["motorway", "trunk", "primary", "secondary", "tertiary", "minor", "service"], true, false]
    layout:
      line-join: round
      line-cap: round
    paint:
      line-color: "#d8f0ff"
      line-opacity: 0.85
      line-width:
        - interpolate
        - ["exponential", 1.6]
        - ["zoom"]
        - 13
        - ["match", ["get", "class"], ["motorway", "trunk"], 1, 0.4]
        - 18
        - ["match", ["get", "class"], ["motorway", "trunk"], 5, ["primary", "secondary"], 3, 1.5]
  - id: buildings
    type: fill-extrusion
    source: omt
    source-layer: building
    minzoom: 13
    paint:
      fill-extrusion-color: "#1a56b0"
      fill-extrusion-height: ["coalesce", ["get", "render_height"], 10]
      fill-extrusion-base: ["coalesce", ["get", "render_min_height"], 0]
      fill-extrusion-vertical-gradient: true
  - id: place-labels
    type: symbol
    source: omt
    source-layer: place
    filter: ["match", ["get", "class"], ["neighbourhood", "suburb", "quarter"], true, false]
    layout:
      text-field: ["coalesce", ["get", "name:en"], ["get", "name"]]
      text-font: ["Noto Sans Regular"]
      text-size: 15
      text-transform: uppercase
      text-letter-spacing: 0.25
      text-max-width: 9
      text-pitch-alignment: viewport
    paint:
      text-color: "#e6f6ff"
      text-halo-color: "#0b3d91"
      text-halo-width: 2.5

What to notice

background-pattern. The grid is a declared image repeated across the whole sheet. On export it becomes the mlym:grid sprite entry.
One source, five looks. Water fill and shoreline line both read the water source-layer. Parks are drawn only as dashed outlines.
No light: needed. The buildings use the default light, which already reads as drafting shading. Add a light: block to retune it.